Deadline for Public Feedback on Updated Opioid Prescribing Guidelines Approaching

Health care provideres and others wanting to comment on the proposed updates to the federal opioid prescribing guidelines have only 5 more days to do so.

The CDC National Center for Injury Prevention and Control, which has been developing the update, has an April 11 deadline for public input. Comments can be submitted at to the Federal Register.¹

“This comment period provides another critical opportunity for diverse audiences to offer their perspective on the draft clinical practice guideline,” Christopher M. Jones, PharmD, acting director of the injury prevention and control center said in a statement on the CDC’s website. “The ultimate goal of this clinical practice guideline is to help people set and achieve their personal goals to reduce their pain and improve their function and quality of life. Getting feedback from the public is essential to achieving this goal.”

The CDC issued its “Guideline for Prescribing Opioids for Chronic Pain”² in 2016, following a 16-year period that saw more than 165,000 Americans die from opioid-related overdoses. These guidelines covered topics from determining when to initiate or continue opioid therapy, selection, dosage, duration, and discontinuation of opioids, and assessing risks and harms of opioid use.

In the following years, opioid prescribing declined substantially, but doctors increasingly took the guideline to mean they shouldn’t prescribe opioids at all, leading some people with severe chronic pain to begin using heroin and synthetic drugs such as fentanyl.

In soliciting comments for the updated guideline, the CDC calls the guideline recommendations voluntary and “are not intended to be applied as inflexible standards of care or replace clinical judgment or individualized, patient-centered care.”

This article originally appeared on Medical Economics.

References

1. Proposed 2022 CDC clinical practice guidelines for prescribing opioids. Federal Register. Published February 7, 2022. Accessed April 7, 2022. https://www.federalregister.gov/documents/2022/02/10/2022-02802/proposed-2022-cdc-clinical-practice-guideline-for-prescribing-opioids
2. Dowell D, Haegerich TM, CHou R. CDC guideline for prescribing opioids for chronic pain—United States, 2016. Morb Mortal Weekly Rep. 2016;65(1):1-49. doi:10.15585/mmwr.rr6501e1