National Academies outlines opioid prescribing guidelines for acute pain

As health care providers wrestle with how best to prescribe opioids, a new report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine hopes to help groups looking to create their own guidelines for acute pain. The report found that although hospitals, pharmacies, and others have tried to scale back, opioids are still overprescribed — after a surgery, for instance, between 41% and 72% of patients don’t finish their prescriptions, the report found. And although the report doesn’t specify any rules, it offers recommendations for groups to consider, including the downstream effects of any prescription and whether there is sufficient evidence to back the use of opioids for a particular condition. The report also identifies some procedures — such as a C-section and wisdom tooth removal — for which prescribing guidelines ought to be refined.