Denver-based RxAssurance just teamed up with the Colorado Attorney General’s Office to offer an app-based tracking mechanism for first responders or laypersons who administer Naloxone for an opioid overdose. The app is one component of the Colorado Naloxone for Life initiative spearheaded by Attorney General Cynthia H. Hoffman to address the opioid epidemic in Colorado by … Continued
Denver, CO — RxAssurance’s OpiSafe platform continues to improve practice efficiency and clinical care. In April, practices using OpiSafe saved an average of 3.7 hours per business day or 74 hours per month. The comprehensive pain medication web and mobile platform, OpiSafe, was created to address the growing epidemic of prescribed opioid misuse and abuse. … Continued
Be careful when you decide to prescribe opioids for chronic pain. Start low and go slow. And be sure you monitor your patients very closely, to assure that the drugs are working and not causing problems. That’s what the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) new guidelines suggest providers do, to help address the … Continued
Now is a very exciting time for efforts to address the opioid overdose epidemic. Just last week, the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) granted fast-track approval of a nasal version of the life-saving opioid overdose-reversing drug Narcan (Naloxone). It currently takes an average of 12 years for a drug to go through clinical development and gain … Continued
Doctors prescribe pain medications to their patients because they have determined that some of their patients need help managing one or more elements of pain, be it from a recent medical procedure, illness, condition or injury. To keep their patients safe, doctors can create pain management agreements with their patients, check their state’s Prescription Drug … Continued
Opioids are powerful medications that relieve pain by lessening pain signals to the brain. Commonly prescribed opioids are hydrocodone (Vicodin), oxycodone (OxyContin, Percocet), morphine (Kadian, Avinza), codeine, and other similar drugs. What drug does what? Hydrocodone is prescribed the most (treats a variety of pain such as pain from dental procedures or injuries). Oxycodone is … Continued
To date, 49 states and the District of Columbia operate Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs (PDMPs), and the 50th state (Missouri) passed a law to establish one soon. These state-run databases were created to prevent and uncover prescription drug abuse, particularly cases of “doctor shopping” and “pharmacy shopping.” Although PDMPs have now been adopted across the … Continued
A recent study released in The Clinical Journal of Pain by a colleague of mine validated my suspicions, yet still shocked me. Lead author G. Caleb Alexander, MD, MS, associate professor in the John Hopkins Bloomberg School’s Department of Epidemiology and co-director of the Center for Drug Safety and Effectiveness, found that nearly half of … Continued