Health insurance providers are engaged to reduce addiction
AHIP and its member plans will continue to support and promote the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) Guidelines for Prescribing Opioids for Chronic Pain (Guideline). These Guidelines articulate when and how to prescribe opioids – which include prescribing non-opioid treatments first, limiting both the dosage and the duration of prescription opioids, and reviewing a patient’s medical history to look for risks of addiction.
AHIP’s new Safe, Transparent Opioid Prescribing (STOP) Initiative, launched last week, is an important industry-wide commitment to ensuring wide-spread adoption of these guidelines. The Initiative includes the introduction of the STOP Measure, which will enable health plans and providers to work together to more effectively improve adherence with the CDC Guidelines, significantly improving patient safety and reducing the risk of opioid misuse.
Health insurance providers will continue to study and promote alternative ways to treat pain, understand and influence prescribing patterns, and ensure patients struggling with addiction get the treatment and support they need. They will also continue to use checks and balances in their own systems to detect any potential prescribing issues, promote other evidence-based approaches to pain management, and limit dosage and duration of opioid prescriptions.