Undisclosed Conflicts of Interest by Physicians Creating the CDC Opioid Prescribing Guidelines: Bad Faith or Incompetence?

We described above how changes in opioid policy aimed at reducing Washington State’s Medicaid and Workers Compensation costs contributed to an increase in methadone deaths between 2003 and late 2014 (23-25). Focusing on similar cost reductions, the Centers for Medicar e and Medicaid Services (CMS) proposed rules for 2019 including several directives intended to reduce " Opioid Overutilization, ” including adoption of the “90 morphine milligram equivalent (MME) threshold cited by the 2016 CDC Opioid Guideline (147, 148). Simply put, reduced prescribing reduces costs for prescribed medications.Chou received research funding to write systemic reviews of opioid analgesics that shaped both Guidelines, but largely ignored opioids ’ potential benefits; he again failed to cite that funding when writing an article bemoaning early harms from the 2016 Guideline’s misapplication (3-5, 48, 74, 85-91). Employing a model created by the tobacco settlements of the 1990s (149), state, federal and local governments have successfully used the 2016 Guideline to justify their legal arguments in settlements of multidistrict litigation (MDL) suits against opioid manufacturers and distributors (150-153). Legal experts’ concerns about Ballantyne’s and Kolodny’s participation in the Guideline’s creation, during which they recei ved financial compensation for MDL-related expert witness work (4, 23, 33, 34, 81-84, 99-105), proved correct when plaintiffs used the 2016 Guideline as a tool...
Source: Pallimed: A Hospice and Palliative Medicine Blog - Category: Palliative Care Tags: health policy judy kollas opioids research schechtman Source Type: blogs