Registration closing soon: AMA State Legislative Strategy Conference
Register now for the 2018 American Medical Association State Legislative Strategy Conference, held Jan. 4–6 in Fort Myers, Fla. This is your chance to learn more about the most pressing issues impacting medicine at the state level, and develop cutting-edge advocacy strategies to deploy in state legislative advocacy.
Thursday will offer a series of strategy workshops where you can hone your advocacy skills and strategies with colleagues, state legislators, pollsters and grassroots directors.
Don't miss this opportunity to share your organizations' priorities, concerns and tactics with advocacy leaders from across the country, and to discuss the challenges and opportunities likely to be part of your upcoming legislative sessions.
Keynote speakers include Bruce P. Mehlman, JD, widely regarded as an expert in developing strategies that achieve impactful policy outcomes, and Sam Quinones, nationally recognized journalist and author of Dreamland: The True Take of America's Opiate Epidemic.
Registration is also open for the National Advocacy Conference. This year the AMA is offering a 20 percent discount if you register now for both the 2018 AMA State Legislative Strategy Conference and the AMA National Advocacy Conference. To register for both conferences and receive your discount, click here. This offer ends Dec. 18.
Physicians: Share your story on the AMA Opioid microsite
A new feature on the AMA Opioid microsite encourages physicians to "Share Your Story" on the ways in which they are responding to the nation's opioid epidemic. Each "Share Your Story" opportunity will focus on one of the six recommendations of the AMA Opioid Task Force (PDF).
The first question addresses the Task Force's focus on increasing access to treatment, asking:
What administrative barriers (e.g. prior authorization, step therapy) have you experienced in your practice when trying to provide multidisciplinary and/or multimodal pain care or comprehensive treatment for a substance use disorder?
Future editions of AMA Advocacy Update will include additional questions related to the Task Force recommendations.
New research highlights patient variability, surgical care and opioid prescribing
A new study (PDF) in the Journal of the American College of Surgeons found that post-discharge opioid use is best predicted by opioid use the day before discharge for patients admitted to the hospital. The study, which reviewed bariatric, benign foregut, liver, pancreas, ventral hernia and colon surgery, found that 85 percent of patients were prescribed an opioid, and only 38 percent of prescribed opioid pills were taken.
Based on the findings, the authors said that 85 percent of patients' home opioid requirements would be satisfied using the following guidelines:
- If no opioid pills are taken the day before discharge, no prescription is needed/
- If 1 to 3 opioid pills are taken the day before discharge, then a prescription for 15 opioid pills is given at discharge.
- If 4 or more pills are taken the day before discharge, then a prescription for 30 opioid pills is given at discharge.
The authors said that their proposed guideline "is an improvement over the legislative requirement of a '7-day supply' because it removes the ambiguity associated with that requirement and takes patient variability into account."
The study also is available on the AMA Opioid microsite.
