• Benjamin Lai, Daniel Witt, Thomas Thacher, and Terrence Witt.
• From the Department of Family Medicine, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN (BL, TT); Alix School of Medicine, Mayo Clinic, Rochester, MN (DW); Department of Family Medicine, Mayo Clinic Health Systems-Northwest Wisconsin, Eau-Claire, WI (TW).
• J Am Board Fam Med. 2020 Nov 1; 33 (6): 1020-1021.

IntroductionPrevious studies suggest a lack of confidence among primary care providers in managing patients on chronic opioid therapy (COT) for chronic non-cancer related pain (CNCP). The US Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) recently introduced guidelines on opioid tapering. In light of these recommendations, our group developed an opioid tapering software to assist healthcare providers in managing patients on COT.MethodsThe initial iteration of our software utilizes RedCap for the application programming interface (API). This tool is designed to reduce a patient's prescribed chronic opioids by 5-10% every month, or 5 morphine milligram equivalents per day (MME), whichever is the greatest, in line with HHS guidelines. Users can also adjust the rate of taper.DiscussionOur group plans to use this software in an upcoming pilot study to taper patients on COT for CNCP. We are exploring the possibility of transitioning our software into other available APIs with the goal of integrating this software into major electronic health record systems. Our group envisions that our software will provide an additional tool within a patient-centered, multi-modal framework in managing patients on COT for CNCP.© Copyright 2020 by the American Board of Family Medicine.

15 keywords...

hide…