FDA panel supports mandatory opioid training for physicians — 5 findings from the FDA's ER/LA REMS assessments

Practice Management

The FDA's Drug Safety and Risk Management Advisory Committee and its Anesthetic and Analgesic Drug Products Advisory Committee unanimously voted to update the ER/LA opioid analgesic Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategies. The updated ER/LA REMS would require physicians to undergo opioid prescription training, according to Medscape Multispecialty.

 

The FDA advisory council agreed physicians should be mandated to undergo training, which would include information on immediate-release, extended-release and long-acting formulations for opioids.

 

In July 2012, the FDA approved ER/LA REMS, which various states and national efforts used to minimize opioid abuse, misuse, addiction overdoses and death while also providing opioids to those patients who require it for pain.

 

At the meeting the panel discussed the results on its ER/LA REMs assessments.

 

Some key findings include:

 

• Some evidence indicates the number of opioid prescriptions have gone down in the last few years. In 2005, the number of prescriptions was 130.9 million, and that number increased to 184.1 million prescriptions in 2011. In 2014, that figure dropped to 166.4 million.

 

• For ER/LA opioids, there were 22.3 million prescriptions in 2010, with that figure dropping to 21.2 million opioid prescriptions in 2014.

 

• Various factors driving the decrease include the requirement for some chronic pain patients to see a pain specialist rather than a primary care physician, as well as training outside of REMS.

 

• However, efforts to lower prescription use were implemented around the same time as REMS, making REMS' effect "very complex."

 

• REMs set out to train 80,000 providers within two years. However, only 37,512 prescribers completed an accredited CE program by February 2015. Another 28,707 providers completed the CE program by February 2016.

 

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