Providers wrote approximately 4.45 billion opioid prescriptions in 2016—with wide variation across states. In addition, an almost 1.8 million Americans, aged 12 or older, either abused or were dependent on prescription opioids in 2016. Improving the way opioids are prescribed through clinical practice guidelines, can ensure patients have access to safer, more effective pain treatment while reducing the number of people who misuse or overdose from prescription opioids. To help with this, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) released the Quality Improvement and Care Coordination: Implementing the CDC Guideline for Prescribing Opioids for Chronic Pain (QI-CC).
The quality improvement (QI) measures provided in the resource are meant to be flexible so that healthcare systems and practice leaders can pick interventions that will work best for their practice and patient population. They are offered as voluntary measures that could help incorporate the evidence contained in CDC’s Guideline for Prescribing Opioids for Chronic Pain in clinical workflow. The purpose of the resource is to encourage careful and selective use of long-term opioid therapy in the context of managing chronic pain through:
- evidence-based prescribing,
- quality improvement (QI) measures to advance the integration of the guideline into clinical practice; and
- practice-level strategies to improve care coordination.
- A resource toolkit
Access the resource and supporting materials at www.cdc.gov/drugoverdose/prescribing/qi-cc.html. Additionally, CDC is providing additional funding to support opioid overdose response activities across the United States:
- $182 million in surge support across states, 4 territories, and nine non-government organizations to expand public health activities
- $12 million to support 11 Tribal Epidemiology Centers and 15 tribal entities to improve opioid overdose surveillance
Learn More
