The Pharmacy Quality Alliance (PQA) regularly develops pharmacy-related quality measures, which are in turn adopted by more prominent quality metric agencies such as the National Committee for Quality Assurance. In 2022, PQA requested input on potential retirement of four quality measures related to opioid prescribing: Antipsychotic Use in Persons with…

Prepared by Stefan G. Kertesz, MD, MSc Heersink UAB School of Medicine Note This summary does not cover all opioid taper-related papers. …

Dear Dr. Redfield and Dr. Schuchat, As a homeless health care provider, committed advocate, and researcher, I write to ask that the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention act now to extend its moratorium on eviction of renters. …

Adaptation by Dr. Stefan Kertesz of a list compiled initially by Ginger Ross (Peer Coach Director, Boulder Care) Mutual aid support groups can be an important part of recovery from substance use disorders (SUDs). Groups can serve both people with an SUD and their families, significant others, and friends. Particularly…

Stefan G. Kertesz, MD, MSc, Ajay Manhapra, MD, Adam J. Gordon, MD, MPH June 15, 2020 We offer these comments in response to Docket No. CDC-2020–0029, with the goal of assisting “CDC’s understanding of stakeholders’ values and preferences regarding pain management and will complement CDC’s ongoing work assessing the need for updating or expanding the CDC Guideline for Prescribing Opioids for Chronic Pain.”

The United States Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration proposed, on August 25, a change to federal rules that govern how and when law enforcement agencies can seek and obtain a court order to examine medical records from historically protected addiction treatment programs. This rule change is distinct from…

Overdose deaths involving opioids took 176,639 American lives in the 5-year period from 2013 through 2017. We know it. Walk into a college class, a rural town, a synagogue, a factory, an evangelical church or a jail and you are going to bump into someone who lost a family member…

A recent report regarding the newest National Survey on Drug Use and Health finds a decline in “new initiates” of heroin from 2016 to 2017. This positive public health indicator could signal progress in a crisis that claimed over 70,000 lives through overdose alone in 2017, but there are ways…

In early 2018, the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services requested public comments on a draft quality measure of physician performance, called “Potential Opioid Overuse”. It’s alluringly simple. Payers and regulators will count the number of patients who receive a total opioid dose equivalent to 90 milligrams morphine or more…