The Federation of State Medical Boards (FSMB) and FSMB Foundation are collaborating with several partners to provide state medical boards with resources to educate health care professionals on the safe and responsible prescribing of extended-release (ER) and long-acting (LA) opioid analgesics for patients with chronic pain.
In a collaboration led by the University of Nebraska Medical Center (UNMC), the UNMC and partners CE City, the France Foundation, and the FSMB and the FSMB Foundation, recently received a Risk Evaluation and Mitigation Strategy (REMS) grant from the ER/LA Opioid Analgesics REMS Program Companies to provide educational programming in ER/LA prescribing to health care professionals.
The grant will provide resources for the FSMB and its philanthropic arm, the FSMB Foundation, to award REMS grants to state medical boards to conduct free live seminars on ER/LA prescribing for health care professionals in their respective states, and provide free online continuing medical education resources on the FSMB Foundation's website.
"Health care providers who prescribe these medications to treat chronic pain are in a key position to balance the benefits and risks of chronic opioid therapy," said Humayun Chaudhry, DO, President and CEO of the FSMB. "State medical boards are, in turn, in a key position to provide educational resources to help the licensees in their states learn safe, responsible prescribing of opioid analgesics."
The Food and Drug Administration has mandated that manufacturers of ER/LA opioid analgesics make available comprehensive prescriber education in the safe use of these medications, with the goal of reducing serious adverse outcomes resulting from inappropriate prescribing, misuse and abuse of these drugs - while maintaining patient access to pain medications.
Given the broad spectrum of health care providers who prescribe opioids, the educational activities will be targeted to a multidisciplinary, interprofessional audience of prescribers. However, the primary audience for the program are clinicians who are registered with the DEA, eligible to prescribe Schedule 2 and 3 drugs, and have written at least one ER/LA opioid prescription in the past year. All education will be offered free to learners; live programs are anticipated to begin in June 2014.