Karen M. Ryan

Pain Management and Prescription Monitoring

Preventing diversion and abuse of prescription controlled substances while ensuring their availability for legitimate medical use is an important public health goal in the United States. In one approach to preventing and identifying drug diversion, 17 states have implemented prescription monitoring programs (PMPs) to monitor the prescribing of certain controlled substances. While PMPs are not intended to interfere with legitimate prescribing, some in the pain management community feel that they negatively affect prescribing for pain management. This article describes a collaborative project initiated by the Pain & Policy Studies Group that brought together regulatory and pain management representatives twice in 1998 to share perspectives and reconcile differing views on the effects of PMPs. The ultimate goals of this project are to provide accurate information to healthcare clinicians about PMPs, better define the balance between preventing drug diversion and providing pain management, and promote continued dialog and cooperation among the groups.

Reform of drug control policy for palliative care in Romania

Unrelieved pain from cancer and HIV/AIDS is a substantial worldwide public-health problem. Inadequate pain relief is partly due to excessively strict national drug-control policies that constrain medical use of essential medicines such as morphine. Romanias drug-control policies are more than 35 years old and impose an antiquated regulatory system that is based on inpatient post-surgical management of acute pain that restricts prescription authority and makes access to opioid treatment difficult for outpatients with severe chronic pain due to cancer or HIV/AIDS. A Ministry of Health palliative-care commission used WHO guidelines to assess and recommend changes to Romanias national drug control law and regulations. The Romanian parliament has adopted a new law that will simplify prescribing requirements and allow modern pain management. Achievement of adequate pain relief is a vital part of worldwide health and will be dependent on reform of antidrug regulations in many countries.

Progress to Achieve Balanced State Policy Relevant to Pain Management and Palliative Care: 2000-2003

State laws and regulatory policies govern healthcare practice, including the prescribing, dispensing, and administering of opioid analgesics to treat pain. A number of national healthcare and law enforcement organizations have identified drug regulatory policy as a potential barrier to pain relief and palliative care, and have called for evaluation and removal. This article summarizes and discusses the results of an innovative evaluation methodology that was used to produce three policy analysis tools, including one report that graded and ranked states based on the quality of their policies related to pain management and palliative care (called a Progress Report Card [PRC]). The PRC development and implementation was a first-of-a-kind study that compared pain policies in all states over a three year period according to the same evaluation criteria. Results demonstrate significant progress to improve policy in a number of states during the study period, but also showed that most state policies are characterized by a lack of “balance.” In addition to providing examples of policy change in particular states, the relevance of these findings to current policy issues, including the importance of communicating and implementing new policies is discussed. The need for partnerships between the healthcare and law enforcement communities is emphasized to create a more positive regulatory environment for pain relief and palliative care, which ultimately will benefit patient care.

Multivariate analysis of countries’ government and health-care system influences on opioid availability for cancer pain relief and palliative care: More than a function of human development

Background: Many international governmental and nongovernmental organizations regard unrelieved cancer pain as a significant global public health problem. Although opioids such as morphine are considered essential medicines in the provision of palliative care and for treating cancer pain, especially when the pain is severe, low- and middle-income countries often lack such medications. Aim: The primary aim of this study was to examine countries’ government and health-care system influences on opioid availability for cancer pain and palliative care, as a means to identify implications for improving appropriate access to prescription opioids. Design: A multivariate regression of 177 countries’ consumption of opioids (in milligrams/death from cancer and AIDS) contained country-level predictor variables related to public health, including Human Development Index, palliative care infrastructure, and health system resources and expenditures. Results: Results were highly explanatory (adjusted R2 = 82%) and Human Development Index was the most predictive variable when controlling for all other factors in the statistical model (B = 11.875, confidence interval = 10.216, 13.534, p < 0.0001). Conclusions: Study findings demonstrate that a limited number of predictor variables characterizing a country’s government and health-care system infrastructure can explain its opioid consumption level, with the greatest influence being very high Human Development Index. However, Human Development Index is not the most policy-relevant factor, and this finding should be reconciled against the reality that many countries with low or medium Human Development Index have succeeded in creating and sustaining a health-care system to strengthen cancer pain care and palliative care, including through the appropriate use of essential prescription opioids.

Improving Availability of and Access to Opioids in Colombia: Description and Preliminary Results of an Action Plan for the Country

Latin America consumes less than 2.7% of the morphine in the world, as reported by the governments to the International Narcotics Control Board. Methods to improve access to opioids for the treatment of pain have been developed by the Pain & Policy Studies Group (PPSG), a World Health Organization Collaborating Center at the University of Wisconsin. This article describes the preparation and implementation of an action plan in Colombia as a part of an international fellowship program on opioid policy developed by the PPSG and funded by the Open Society Institute. The action plan for Colombia included three steps: 1) a survey of regulators and health care providers to identify the current situation and their perceptions of opioid availability in the regions of the country; 2) a workshop with representatives of the Ministry of Health, the national and state competent authorities, pain and palliative care physicians, and international leaders; and 3) implementation workshops at the local level throughout the country. For the survey, response rates of 47% and 96% were registered among physicians and competent authorities, respectively. The survey identified significant regional differences in perceived opioid availability between physicians and regulators. Focus group discussions during the workshop identified several reasons leading to limited availability of opioids in the country, including deficiencies in the procurement process, insufficient human resources, excessive bureaucratic tasks, insufficient number of pharmacies authorized to dispense controlled medications in the country, lack of training in the health care professions, and overly restrictive laws and regulations governing opioid availability. The third step of the action plan has not been implemented. Additional and continuous monitoring needs to be implemented to measure the progress of this project.

Ensuring Patient Access to Essential Medicines While Minimizing Harmful Use: A Revised World Health Organization Tool to Improve National Drug Control Policy

ABSTRACT In 2011, the World Health Organization (WHO) published a series of 21 guidelines to assist governments in improving their national drug control laws, regulations, and administrative procedures to promote the availability of controlled medicines for pain relief and for a variety of acute and chronic diseases and conditions. These guidelines ultimately are designed to encourage the development of policies designed to fulfill a countrys dual obligation concerning these medicines: to prevent their abuse, diversion and trafficking while ensuring access for medical and scientific purposes. This article summarizes each guideline and outlines the constituents who can actively participate in making controlled medicines available to the patients who need them. It is hoped that representatives of governments and medical institutions, as well as health care professionals, will commonly and effectively use the revised WHO guidelines as a policy change tool.

A Multifaceted Approach to Improve the Availability and Accessibility of Opioids for the Treatment of Cancer Pain in Serbia: Results From the International Pain Policy Fellowship (2006–2012) and Recommendations for Action

Cancer is the second leading cause of death in Serbia, and at least 14,000-16,000 patients experience moderate-to-severe cancer pain every year. Cancer pain relief has been impeded by inadequate availability of opioid analgesics and barriers to their accessibility. In 2006, a Serbian oncologist was selected as an International Pain Policy Fellow. The fellow identified barriers to opioid availability in Serbia and implemented an action plan to address the unavailability of oral morphine, attitudinal and knowledge barriers about opioids, and barriers in the national opioid control policy, in collaboration with the government, local partners, and international experts, including those from the World Health Organization. Collaborative efforts resulted in availability of immediate-release oral morphine, registration of controlled-release hydromorphone, and reimbursement of oral methadone for cancer pain; numerous educational activities aimed at changing inadequate knowledge and negative attitudes toward opioids; recognition of opioids as essential medicines for palliative care in a new National Palliative Care Strategy; and recognition of the medical use of opioids as psychoactive-controlled substances for the relief of pain included in a new national law on psychoactive-controlled substances, and the development of recommendations for updating regulations on prescribing and dispensing opioids. An increase in opioid consumption at the institutional and national levels also was observed. This article outlines a multifaceted approach to improving access to strong opioids for cancer pain management and palliative care in a middle-income country and offers a potential road map to success.

A Bibliography of Recent Pharmaceutical Care Articles on Pain Management and End-of-Life Care Issues

The bibliography which follows this introduction was prepared by staff at the University of Wisconsin Pain & Policy Studies Group (PPSG) with funds provided by the Robert Wood Johnson Foundation (RWJF). The purpose of the bibliography is to inform pharmacists and other health-care professionals about recent journal articles relating to pain management and end-of-life issues. These articles are relevant to opioid analgesic pharmacotherapy and to other important issues of

Medical Use and Abuse of Opioids

A study of medical use and abuse trends of opioid analgesics by David E. Joranson, Karen M. Ryan, Aaron M. Gilson and June L. Dahl of the Pain & Policy Studies Group (PPSG) at the University of Wisconsin Medical School was recently published in the Journal of the American Medical Association.1 Two objectives guided the study, i.e., to present the extent that opioid analgesics as a class are represented in reported drug abuse, and to evaluate trends in the medical use and abuse of five opioid analgesics used to treat severe pain. The article challenges the conventional wisdom that drugs which are medically essential for the relief of severe pain, such as morphine, are widely abused. Two databases were analyzed for this study: (1) the Automation of Reports and Consolidated Orders System (ARCOS) and (2) the Drug Abuse Warning Network (DAWN). ARCOS data represent the retail distribution of controlled substances in Schedules I and II, as well as opioid analgesics in Schedule III, and is reported for each drug in total grams and grams per 100,000 population (adjusted for a state’s popu-