The ASIPP and the Opioid Epidemic

Everyone is affected by the opioid crisis. For many of us, the crisis has been personal. Illicit drugs, prescription drugs and mental health have all played their part. Some argue that the crisis started with an effort to treat pain, codified in hospital protocols.[i] Others said that drug companies played down the addictive effects of opioid prescriptions and incentivized prescribing them.[ii] In response, the medical community has tried to help. There is now renewed focus on mental health and substance abuse treatment.[iii] Unfortunately, there has been a history of naiveté amongst many physicians, especially two decades ago when prescribing opioid long term for chronic pain was much more common. However, at least one physicians group sounded the alarm very early on, and dedicates much of its time towards advocating for opioid prescription accountability.
 
That group is the American Society of Interventional Pain Physicians, also known as ASIPP. Members of ASIPP are mostly interventional pain physicians, but also include allied healthcare professionals. “Interventional” means that the doctors rely on noninvasive and minimally invasive diagnostic and therapeutic tools to treat chronic pain. They also prescribe oral medical therapies. These doctors often see patients who have already been prescribed long-term oral opioid medication, and that puts them in a unique position to see the effects of opioid addiction. Since the 1990s, this society has been at the forefront of the fight against the opioid crisis.
 
Tackling opioid addiction, abuse and misuse is challenging and cannot be done alone. That is why interventional pain physician leaders created a bill to help states with health-oriented drug monitoring programs share information across state lines. This was not a policing program, but rather a way for doctors to improve public health by preventing opioid overuse and misuse. Spearheaded by Dr. Laxmaiah Manchikanti, MD, this bill was called the National All Schedules Prescription Electronic Reporting, NASPER for short, and was the first and only physician drafted bill to be passed by the U.S. Congress.[iv] Since the bill’s passage in 2005, many states have received grant funding from the U.S. Health and Human Services to build and enhance an opioid drug-monitoring program. This has empowered health professionals to control some of the supply of drugs, and hold inappropriate prescribers accountable. More on state prescription drug monitoring programs here: https://www.deadiversion.usdoj.gov/faq/rx_monitor.htm#10
 
This month ASIPP will hold its annual conference in Florida, and Dr. Vijay Singh, the medical director of Spine Pain Diagnostics Associates, will be receiving a lifetime achievement award for his leadership in interventional pain medicine. This award is for his commitment to his specialty and even more so, for his compassion as a doctor; one who took on a public health crisis before we were even calling it a crisis"


[i] https://www.nytimes.com/2017/10/26/us/opioid-crisis-public-health-emergency.html

[ii] https://www.mccaskill.senate.gov/opioid-investigation

[iii] Department of Health and Human Services, Centers for Disease Cont
rol and Prevention, CDC Guideline for Prescribing Opioids for Chronic Pain –United States, 2016
(Mar. 15, 2016)  (www.cdc.gov/mmwr/volumes/65/rr/pdfs/rr6501e1er.pdf).

[iv] http://nasper.org/