Choosing Opioid Policies our Patients Can Live With

In 1997, the American Academy of Pain Medicine and the American Pain Society jointly issued recommendations regarding the care of patients with chronic pain.¹ Several years later, the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations issued pain management standards “recommending” that hospitals identify patients with pain upon initial screening and collect data to monitor the effectiveness of pain management.² Nearly two decades later, we find ourselves in the midst of a opioid epidemic triggered, in part, by excessive utilization of opioid pain medications.³ We now find ourselves playing “catch up,” as we try to undo some of the practices of the past, and change the culture to better balance benefit and risk.

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