| Article
Urine toxicology is actually a big business in many fields of medicine, not just pain management. A lot of healthcare facilities, critical care units, emergency departments utilize tox screening as well. As of 2015, it was close to a 5 billion dollar business. A lot of new companies are offering...
| Podcast
Overdose--a small word that packs a major punch, and a big reason for many recent legal regulatory changes in controlled substance prescribing and pain management. Too many physicians and allied healthcare practitioners are caught unawares by the legal issues surrounding overdose events, fatal and...
| Article
Researchers from Washington University School of Medicine, St. Louis, report that receptors on immune cells may be a more effective therapeutic target than nerve cells for the delivery of analgesia for chronic pain. The discovery arose from an investigation into the mechanism of action of a...
| Article
Approximately 1 billion people in the world are affected with migraine and the thought is that about 40% of them that are candidates for some type of preventative therapy. A sizable proportion of that 40% doesn’t actually receive the kind of preventative therapy that they need, and so that equates...
| Article
Although the CDC has issued recommendations against taking opioids with benzodiazepines, almost 25% of Medicare patients who are prescribed opioids are also getting prescriptions for benzodiazepines. Now, results from a study conducted at the University of Pittsburg School of Pharmacy confirms the...
| Podcast
Lower back pain is the most common reason to see a physician for pain and the number one cause of disability. Some patients with lower back pain eventually require spinal surgery. Unfortunately, 20% to 40% of these patients will develop failed back surgery syndrome (FBSS or FBS) after the first...
| Article
The terms prescribing guidelines and prescribing rules are often used interchangeably although they really have separate meanings. Guidelines, by their nature, are voluntary recommendations. Whereas prescribing rules are mandatory. It’s important for prescribers to be aware of what exactly the rules...
| Article
An article appearing last week in Harvard Health Online explores the impact of dietary choices on chronic pain by way of the inflammatory effect of certain foods. Dr. Fred Tabung, PhD, MSPH, visiting researcher with the Department of Nutrition at Harvard’s T.H. Chan School of Public Health commented...
| Podcast
Behavioral and psychological interventions for pain management have often been included in patient care as a last resort, a place to turn to when biomedical interventions fail to yield sustained amelioration in pain symptoms. Such an approach disregards research which has long suggested that patient...
| Article
Practitioners need to understand that there are steps that they should be taking to minimize the potential of a bad legal outcome in the event of an investigation involving an overdose.
The liability for an overdose event tracks back to the practitioner’s adherence to licensing board requirements...