BOSTON (AP) — A group representing 25,000 doctors in Massachusetts issued new guidelines Thursday for prescribing pain medication, citing an epidemic of opioid abuse that claimed the lives of more than 1,000 people in the state last year.
The Massachusetts Medical Society said it is launching a major campaign, targeting doctors and patients, on prescribing medication and on the safe storage and disposal of pain medications.
The organization’s president, Dr. Dennis Dimitri, said that while most physicians act responsibly, too many doses of opioid medication are still in circulation.
“Even those physicians who have been prescribing responsibly can probably take a look at these guidelines and find areas where they can do things a little bit differently and a little bit better,” said Dimitri.
Doctors often prescribe pain medication to last longer than it is needed and don’t always tell patients what to do with leftover drugs. Dimitri said the availability of prescribed medications has been on the rise in recent years after years of what was considered the under-treatment of pain. OxyContin, Percocet and Vicodin are among the better known painkillers that fall within this class of synthetic drugs.
“The pendulum has swung a bit too far,” he said.
The group’s guidelines include screening patients for personal or family histories of substance abuse and mental health status; starting patients on the minimum doses needed to achieve the desired level of pain control; and counseling patients to store medications securely and never share them with others.
According to the U.S. Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, more than 80 percent of people who misuse prescription pain medications are using drugs prescribed for someone else, Dimitri said.
The Massachusetts Medical Society will offer free pain management courses to doctors and others authorized to prescribe medication. Dimitri said better education about ways to manage pain could help reduce prescription drug abuse.
State health officials say more than 1,000 people died from opioid-related overdoses in 2014 — a 3 percent increase over the 967 deaths in 2013, and a 33 percent jump over the number of deaths in 2012.
Gov. Charlie Baker named a 16-member task force in February to formulate a statewide strategy for dealing with addiction, treatment and recovery.
