Abstract:
This paper offers a response by medical professionals and patient advocates to the May
2019 final draft report recommendations of the HHS Inter-Agency Task Force on Pain
Management. The authors propose that urgent changes in public policy on pain
management are needed to repair the widespread damage done to pain patients,
healthcare providers, and other stakeholders by the 2016 CDC Guideline on Prescribing
Opioids for Chronic Pain, and by the related “Opioid Safety Initiative” of the Veterans
Health Administration (VHA). An interim US policy on prescription of opioids is offered
for the period during which detailed practice standards will be developed by professional
medical associations, as envisioned by the Task Force report and enabling legislation.
Our primary focus and concern is on the reality that the process set underway by the HHS Task Force final report will likely take years to mature in updated medical practice standards. Meanwhile, patients are dying of medical neglect and physician desertion while US and State regulatory agencies dither and avoid coming to grips with the reality that the US “War on Drugs” has been turned into a full scale war on people in pain. This bureaucratic madness must stop, and legislation will likely be needed to make it stop. We believe the November 2018 Resolution 235 of the AMA House of Delegates offers a framework for correcting course — and that a major part of that correction must be directed to the US Drug Enforcement Administration and State regulators who are driving doctors out of practice in droves in turnb killing patients who have nowhere to turn.
This paper comes at a remarkably opportune time, given the May 15th declaration of six major professional academies representing 650,000 physicians and medical students.
| Frontline Physicians Call on Politicians to End Political Interference in the Delivery of Evidence Based Medicine – aafp.org
Washington, DC (May 15, 2019) – Our organizations are firmly opposed to efforts in state legislatures across the United States that inappropriately interfere with the patient-physician … www.aafp.org |
Filed under: General Problems
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