The Honorable Edward Markey
25 Dirksen Senate Office Building
Washington, D.C. 20510
Dear Senator Markey,
I am writing on behalf of the nearly 25,000 physicians, residents and medical students of the Massachusetts Medical Society to support your legislation which would require all prescribers of opioids to take accredited education on best practices for pain management and substance use disorder treatment. We believe your legislation strikes an appropriate balance by ensuring that all prescribers of opioids are educated as to the basics of opioids and pain management while avoiding onerous and redundant mandates on providers. Physicians and other prescribers who are already required to take these courses due to state licensure or specialty board requirements, will be deemed as meeting the education mandate. The crisis of opioid misuse and substance use disorder continues to be a public health crisis. As such we believe a federal requirement, which is flexible and respects existing state and specialty requirements, is reasonable.
The MMS has been active in the creation of pain management continuing medical education and has made it available for free to all prescribers on our website. Our goal is to help educate as many prescribers as possible to make sure patients are cared for appropriately. To date 10,719 total courses have been completed by 5,324 individual users. Recently the NEJM Knowledge + plus developed a module on pain management which is available also for free to all prescribers. The course teaches prescribers the latest practices for assessing and managing acute and chronic pain; current guidelines in the appropriate use of opioids for pain management and evidence-based strategies for recognizing and treating opioid use disorder.
Combatting opioid abuse and substance use disorder is and will continue to be a priority for the Massachusetts Medical Society. We will continue to focus our advocacy and educational programs on these critical issues and how we can help physicians and other health care providers best care for patients and their families.
We thank you for your leadership in this critical area.
Sincerely,
Maryanne C. Bombaugh, MD, MSc, MBA, FACOG
