Last week we proudly released new Arizona Opioid Prescribing Guidelines for Arizona clinicians. They’re a voluntary, consensus set of principles and best practices for prescribing opioids. The Guidelines were built using the expertise of practitioners from across Arizona including representatives from professional associations, health plans, academic institutions, federal healthcare providers, and many others.
The new guidelines balance appropriate treatment of pain with approaches to more safely prescribe opioids. They’re geared for clinicians in primary care and specialty outpatient settings who treat acute pain and/or manage chronic pain but not end of life care or pain management due to malignancy. These new Guidelines complement other statewide best practices for Emergency Department Controlled Substance Prescribing and Dispensing Controlled Substances.
The Guidelines are posted on the ADHS clinicians’ website. There, you’ll find the complete, comprehensive guidance document and a 1-page summary for each of the Guidelines for acute and chronic pain. Please encourage your Stakeholders to link their websites with these important new documents.
The U of A is in the process of putting together free, online training to help clinicians to better understand the Arizona Opioid Prescribing Guidelines. They expect to turn the key on the new on-line training module in January.
Our Stakeholder group will be meeting on December 10 at the Planning Summit to Advance the Prescription Misuse & Abuse Initiative: Next Steps in Statewide Implementation. The event will be held at the Renaissance Hotel in downtown Phoenix from 10 a.m. to 3:30 p.m. We’ll be reviewing progress to date and discussing how to strengthen the work on preventing unintentional overdoses and deaths due to prescription drug abuse.
