High-risk opioid prescribing can increase the risk of abuse and overdose. This study evaluated the impact of four opioid prescribing policies for opioid-naïve patients – nonopioid medications during surgery, decreased opioid doses in operating rooms, standardized electronic health record alerts, and limits on postoperative opioid supply – implemented by one opioid stewardship program in a large US healthcare system between 2016 and 2018. Post-implementation, researchers observed decreases in postoperative opioid prescription doses, fewer opioid prescription refills, and less patient-reported discharge pain.

Rates of prescription opioid misuse and abuse led to recommendations for dose tapering for patients with chronic pain. However, concerns have been raised about the potential harms associated with rapidly decreasing doses or discontinuing opioids. Building on previous research, these researchers used a large claims database to explore the unintended negative consequences of tapering patients on stable, long-term opioid therapy. Findings indicate that opioid tapering was associated with fewer primary care visits, greater numbers of emergency department visits, and reduced adherence to antihypertensive and antidiabetic medications.

A national focus on reducing opioid misuse and abuse has resulted in changes to opioid prescribing policies and practice. This retrospective longitudinal study explored changes in prescribing rates, supply and dose of opioid prescriptions after changes in opioid prescribing policies in North Carolina. Researchers found that that prescribing patterns for acute and postsurgical pain patients (but not chronic pain patients) decreased after a state medical board initiative to reduce high-dose and high-volume. Further, new legislation to limit initial opioid prescriptions for acute and postsurgical pain led to a decrease in prescribing for cancer patients with chronic pain, but did not lead to reductions among patients with acute, postsurgical, or non-cancer chronic pain.

Prescription opioids are commonly used to manage surgical and non-surgical pain but misuse of opioids is a serious patient safety concern. In this retrospective cohort study of Veterans Health Administration patients, researchers found that opioid misuse among previously opioid-naïve patients increases significantly after 11 months of chronic use, regardless of whether the opioid was prescribed for surgical or non-surgical pain.

Opioid medication use is associated with an increased risk of adverse events; however research has shown sudden discontinuation of opioids is also associated with adverse events such as withdrawal and hospitalization. This before and after study evaluated the impact of the VA’s Opioid Safety Initiative (OSI) on characteristics and prescribing practices. Results indicate that length of tapering period increased, and mortality risk decreased following OSI implementation.

Research has shown that prescribers who are notified of a patient’s fatal opioid overdose will decrease milligram morphine equivalents (MME) up to 3 months following notification as compared to prescribers who are not notified. This article reports on the same cohort’s prescribing behavior at 4-12 months. Among prescribers who received notification, total weekly MME continued to decrease more than the control group during the 4-12 month period.

Opioid use by older adults increases the risk of falls. This study examined electronic health record data to determine the proportion of older adults presenting to the emergency room or urgent care due to a fall who receive an opioid prescription, particularly those with at least one risk factor for misuse. Nearly one third of patients received a prescription for an opioid and/or benzodiazepine, and 11% had at least one risk factor for misuse.

The opioid epidemic has prompted national and institutional guidelines for safe opioid prescribing. This paper describes the development, implementation, and sustainment of a toolkit for safer opioid prescribing for chronic pain in primary care. The authors describe organizational, technical, and external barriers to implementation along with attempted solutions and their effects. The toolkit is available as supplemental material.

Safe prescribing dictates that prescriptions should only be written for the patients who are intended to use the prescribed medications. Using claims data, this analysis identified a high rate of opioid prescriptions written for and filled by the spouses of patients undergoing outpatient surgery (who may be unable to fill prescriptions themselves after surgery). Findings suggest intentional, clinically inappropriate prescribing of opioids.

In response to the increase in opioid deaths, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released the Guidelines for Prescribing Opioids for Chronic Pain in 2016, with an update released in 2022. This study reports on the CDC Opioid QI Collaborative which was launched to identify successful evidence-based strategies for implementing the guidelines. The challenges and strategies described in the publication can be used by health systems to accelerate implementation of the guidelines.

Drug diversion is a system issue that has the potential to disrupt patient access to safe, reliable medications and result in harm. These guidelines offer a structured approach for organizations to develop and implement drug diversion prevention efforts. The strategies submitted focus on foundational, organizational, and individual prevention actions that target risk points across the medication use process such as storage, prescribing, and waste disposal.

In 2016, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released guidelines for safe opioid prescribing for chronic pain. Based on an updated evidence review, the CDC has revised the guidelines and released the Clinical Practice Guideline for Prescribing Opioids for Pain - United States, 2022, include recommendations for outpatient acute, subacute, and chronic opioid use. The twelve recommendations fall into four broad categories: determining whether or not to initiate opioids for pain; selecting opioids and determining opioid dosages; deciding duration of initial opioid prescription and conducting follow-up; and assessing risk and addressing potential harms of opioid use. The CDC will update and develop tools and resources to support dissemination of these guidelines. The recommendations do not apply to pain related to sickle cell disease or cancer or to patients receiving palliative or end-of-life care, or for patients in the emergency department or admitted to the hospital.

Concurrent prescribing of opioids and benzodiazepines can put patients at increased risk of overdose. This randomized study found that pharmacist email alerts to clinicians caring for patients recently co-prescribed opioids and benzodiazepines did not reduce concurrent prescribing of these medications.

In 2022, the Accreditation Council on Graduate Medical Education (ACGME) began requiring residency programs to provide instruction and experience in pain management for internal medicine trainees. Residency program directors were surveyed in 2019 about whether and how they provide instruction and experience to residents in safe opioid prescribing (SOP) and treatment of opioid use disorder (OUD). Most programs required didactic learning, but few required clinical experience. Given that the ACGME requirement is now in place, the researchers suggest many programs may be ill-prepared to meet the requirement.

“Opioid never event” (ONE) is a proposed classification to describe dependence or overdose among opioid-naïve patients prescribed opioids at hospital discharge. Based on a retrospective review of medical records of patients at one academic medical center, researchers estimated that the ONE affected approximately 2 per 1,000 opioid-naïve surgical patients and persistent opioid use 90 to 360 days after surgery was present in 45% of patients with ONEs.

Nudges (e.g., default order sets) in the electronic health record (EHR) have been shown to encourage safer prescribing of opioids in emergency departments. This study evaluated the effect of nudges to reduce opioid prescribing for opioid-naïve patients with acute pain. Primary care practices were cluster randomized to control, opioid justification in the EHR, peer comparison, or combined opioid justification and peer comparison groups. The three intervention groups showed reduced opioid prescribing compared to control.

Potentially inappropriate opioid infusion use can result in adverse patient outcomes. This single-site retrospective study found that potentially inappropriate opioid infusions are prevalent (44% of patients receiving opioid infusions during end-of-life care) and were associated with high rates of patient and staff distress.

Adverse events associated with long-term opioid therapy have led to recommendations for dose tapering for patients with chronic pain. This study assessed the long-term risks of overdose and mental health crisis as a result of dose tapering. Consistent with earlier research on short-term risks, results indicate that opioid tapering is associated with increased risk of adverse events up to 24 months after initiation of tapering.