An Opioid Quality Metric Based on Dose Alone? 80 Professionals Respond to NCQA

Introduction: As the US comes to grips with a crisis of opioid overdose and addiction, many professionals have assessed that excessive opioid prescribing, based on weak data, helped us reach this point. Efforts to reduce prescribing while optimizing care for patients with pain, and expanding access to addiction treatment, are of cardinal importance. How we advance these objectives depends partly on changing our shared understandings of what it means to deliver good care. It also depends on policies, resources and formal methods to assess if we are doing a good job. The 2016 Guideline on Prescribing Opioids for Chronic Pain from the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) represents one such effort.

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