Pain Management

There may be an inexpensive way to reduce the risky use of pain medications by people at high risk of overdosing: using trained therapists in the emergency department to provide motivational interviews.

The intravenous acetaminophen Ofirmev has been shown to decrease hospital length of stay, opioid-related complications, and overall costs compared with traditional opioid analgesics.

The guideline is designed to improve decision-making when prescribing pain medication. CDC authors note that the sheer rise of opioid prescriptions cannot be explained by the underlying health status of the population.

Study finds new opioid use high among adults with COPD, raising safety concerns in this vulnerable population.

This year's Nobel Prize winner in economics and his wife uncover sad statistics on how substance abuse and suicide are taking their toll on white Americans at midlife. Princeton's Angus Deaton speculates that the trends reflect the broader picture of inequality.

A study by Kaiser Permanente published today in The American Journal of Managed Care confirms that patients with chronic pain are seeking complementary treatments, and that if physicians must ask if they want to know about them.

Nearly one-fourth of patients with an opioid prescription for use for chronic pain will end up using the drugs in the long term, according to the result of a new study published in Mayo Clinic Proceedings.

With a growing world population and a growing proportion of elderly, more people are living in suboptimal health around the world. A third of the world's population experienced more than 5 ailments in 2013, according to a study published in The Lancet.

New legislation introduced by a bipartisan group of US senators would make it more difficult for new and generic opioid drugs to obtain the approval of the FDA.

A disease management program at the University of Minnesota revealed only some targeted chronic diseases benefitted from the program while others were unaffected.

Steven D. Hickman, PsyD, associate clinical professor at the University of California, San Diego, invited a roomful of conference attendees to put down the notes, close their eyes, set an intention, and breathe, gaining an "awareness of the breath." His session, "Mindfulness-Based Stress Reduction for Patients with Chronic or Life-Threatening Illness," highlighted techniques based on 2000-year-old Eastern philosophy that can help patients learn to respond to pain, not react to it.

Specialty drugs expected to account for 40% of total prescription spending by 2016, according to Catamaran Corporation.

A study just published in The American Journal of Managed Care examined how benefit design differences affected seniors who received prescription coverage through Medicare Advantage compared with a stand-alone Medicare drug plan. The review showed that integrating drug coverage with medical care resulted in fewer barriers to name-brand drugs, with lower copayments.

HHS issued an interpretive rule that requires drug companies to provide discounts on orphan drugs sold through a federal program just months after a judge struck down the government's previous version of the rule.

Changes to a hospice drug rule will reduce the types of medications that require prior authorization. Previous rules prohibited Medicare hospice patients from filling their Part D medications until they had confirmed that hospice providers did not cover them first.

This spring as the feds have been drawing up new rules for the program, a pitched battle has broken out between hospitals and drug manufacturers who say the program, known as 340B, is now bloated and badly regulated.

This study examines whether patients treated with specialty pharmaceuticals have improved outcomes compared with patients treated with conventional therapies, and evaluates costs associated with these treatments.