AMA urges CDC to revise opioid prescribing guideline

CHICAGO—The American Medical Association (AMA) is urging the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) to make significant revisions to its 2016 Guideline for Prescribing Opioids for Chronic Pain to protect patients with pain from the ongoing unintended consequences and misapplication of the guidance.

“To make meaningful progress toward ending this epidemic, a broad-based public health approach is required,” wrote AMA Executive Vice President and CEO James L. Madara, M.D. “We are now facing an unprecedented, multi-factorial and much more dangerous overdose and drug epidemic driven by heroin and illicitly manufactured fentanyl, fentanyl analogs, and stimulants. We can no longer afford to view increasing drug-related mortality through a prescription opioid-myopic lens.”