Journal of Urgent Care Medicine

CDC Wants More Opioid Guidelines—but Will They Help?

Robert Redfield, MD took the reins at the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention in the midst of a national explosion in opioid addiction and death. As such, he vowed that tackling the problem would be a top priority for the CDC. Right now, that means demanding that his agency set new guidelines for prescribing opioids for short-term pain and implementing new systems to track overdoses in hospital emergency rooms. However, a study conducted and …

Abstracts in Urgent Care – March 2018

Confirmed Flu Ups Short-Term Risk for MI Key point: Patients with laboratory-confirmed influenza are almost six times more likely to be admitted for acute myocardial infarction (MI) in the following 7 days. Citation: Kwong JC, Schwartz KL, Campitelli MA, et al. Acute myocardial infarction after laboratory-confirmed influenza infection. N Engl J Med. 2018;378(4):345-353. Results of a cohort study published in the New England Journal of Medicine revealed that patients with laboratory-confirmed influenza were almost six …

New Guidance Recommends Against Opioids for Acute Pain, Too

Updates to pain guidelines in the era of opioid addiction have focused on treatment of chronic pain, generally. The latest edict takes a close look at the practice of prescribing narcotic medications for acute pain, however—a subject all the more relevant to the urgent care provider. Improving the Safety of Opioid Use for Acute Noncancer Pain in Hospitalized Adults: A Consensus Statement from the Society of Hospital Medicine recommends limiting the use of opioids to …

Florida Joins States that Limit Opioid Prescriptions

Florida Gov. Rick Scott just signed new legislation into effect limiting the amount of opioid pain relievers physicians can write at one time. As other states have done, and as has been discussed at the federal level, the bill will limit opioid prescriptions for acute pain to a 3-day supply, though Florida prescribers will have the option of writing for a 7-day supply if medically necessary. The law will require prescribers to check the state’s …

Bill Would Restrict Opioid Prescriptions for Acute Pain to 3 Days Nationally

Efforts to reduce access to opioid medications for acute pain have varied greatly from state to state, in spite of President Trump’s declaration that related addiction and deaths constitute a public health emergency. Now, a bipartisan bill just introduced in Congress would impose a national policy if it passes, restricting prescriptions for opioids for acute pain to 3 days (ample for the urgent care setting). Significantly, the bill would also authorize adding $1 billion to …

More States Try to Address Opioid Crisis Legislatively

West Virginia and Florida are the latest states to seek a legislative solution to the nation’s ongoing crisis of opioid misuse, abuse, and related deaths. In West Virginia, the state senate just voted unanimously to limit new painkiller prescriptions for most patients to a 7-day supply, though the number would be lower for urgent care centers and emergency rooms (4 days) and for dentists and ophthalmologists (3 days). Florida is looking at a bill that …

New Data May Offer Hope for Effective Non-opioid Acute Pain Treatment

Patient advocates have been pushing back on legislative and clinical efforts to put the brakes on widespread prescribing of opioid pain medications, on the grounds that the medications are a necessity for some patients in extreme pain. The problem—so far—is that there don’t seem to be any viable alternatives that work as well. A new study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association indicates that could be changing, though. Chang, et al compared …

FDA Orders Label Changes for Opioid Cough and Cold Medications

The U.S. Food and Drug Administration will order changes to labeling information for opioid cough and cold medications to limit their use to adults aged 18 years and older. It will also require that new safety information be added to highlight the risk for addiction, abuse, overdose, and other dangerous potential side effects for all patients. Codeine-containing products like Tuxarin ER and Tuzistra ER, as well as products that contain hydrocodone (eg, Flowtuss, Rezira) will …

Expect Changes to Drug Panels in Response to Opioid Crisis

The unabated epidemic of opioid and synthetic opioid addiction has moved President Trump to declare it a national public health emergency. It’s also moving occupational health providers, including some urgent care operators, to look at updating the drug screens they give as part of their pre-employment examinations. Tennessee Occupational Health, for one, reports that as much as 80% of positive drug tests they see show evidence of opiates. As recently as 5 years, ago, marijuana …

Intermountain Quantifies Goal to Cut Opioid Prescriptions

The need to reduce access to opioid pain medications is pretty well accepted at this point, though much of the outcry is vague and often geared toward echoing statistics about the very real epidemic of addiction and death. However, Intermountain Health, which operates InstaCare urgent care centers in Utah and Idaho, has gone a step further by crunching its own numbers and devising a plan to cut opioid prescriptions across its systems by 40% by …

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