photo: D. W. Dorken |
Rocco Gerace, MD Registrar
It is the College’ s view that prescribing opioids under the right conditions is critical for good patient care.
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The College’ s mandate is public protection. Given the very real evidence that we are in the midst of an opioid overdose crisis, we are stepping up efforts to work with physicians to ensure appropriate, safe prescribing for patients. We believe this can be accomplished, in the majority of matters, by sharing information with individual physicians and ensuring they have the resources they need to safely and appropriately prescribe opioids to patients. One of the tools that exists in Ontario to identify physicians’ prescribing patterns is the Narcotic Monitoring System( NMS). The NMS was developed to identify drug utilization patterns and trends and to detect unusual prescribing activities. The NMS’ s primary use of this information is to inform |
harm reduction strategies, education initiatives and dispensing practices related to monitored drugs. However, if there is suspected illegal activity or professional misconduct, the Ministry reports to law enforcement or the College as applicable. More recently, the Ministry has been providing information to the College where it appears, based on NMS’ s analysis of dispensing data, that some physicians are engaging in prescribing patterns that may not be consistent with The Canadian Guideline for Safe and Effective Use of Opioids for Chronic Non-Cancer Pain and may suggest a possible risk to patients. For example, circumstances where it appears a physician has prescribed daily doses of more than 650 OME / day over extended periods of time to multiple patients may trigger notification to the College. |
Issue 3, 2016 Dialogue 7 |