Authors of CDC opioid guidelines say they’ve been misapplied

Clinicians and other medical professionals wrongly implemented federal guidelines for prescribing opioids, the authors behind the guidelines say in a new paper. As a result, some patients who ought to be taking prescription pain medications haven’t been receiving them or have had their regimens cut off. The guidelines, published by the CDC in 2016, were meant to offer recommendations for primary care physicians treating chronic pain, but advocates say that some clinicians, insurers, and state agencies have inappropriately used them to stop treatments. In the new paper, the authors say physicians used the recommendations to justify “hard limits and abrupt tapering of drug dosages,” even though the guidelines did not actually endorse such policies.