Revised Guideline Being Released Soon
This month we may finally learn what the CDC intends to do after five years of its public health experiment, which has been conducted with virtually no effort to measure its impact on patients. On July 16, the agency is expected to release a long-awaited draft of a revised guideline during a meeting of its Board of Scientific Counselors.
Although the CDC’s review of the guideline has been underway since 2019, the agency has disclosed no details about its plans, which may include new treatment recommendations for short-term acute pain, migraines and other chronic pain conditions. Even the AMA is in the dark about what the CDC is planning.
“Without seeing a specific proposal, we can’t speculate on what CDC might be considering. We will continue to work with CDC to ensure that any recommendations respect and support care for patients with pain. This includes encouraging CDC to make any drafts open to the public for comment to ensure that any revisions or additions do not make the same mistakes as the 2016 Guideline,” said Harmon.
One of the “mistakes” the CDC made was releasing the guideline during a secretive, ham-handed webinar. The agency also refused to disclose the names of its outside advisors, which included members of the anti-opioid activist group Physicians for Responsible Opioid Prescribing (PROP).
As recently as last year, the CDC declined to release memos, conflict-of-interest statements and other communications related to the 2016 guideline. Nearly 1,500 pages of documents provided to PNN under a Freedom of Information Act request were heavily redacted or scrubbed of information. Over 1,200 pages were completely blank.
The CDC is being a bit more transparent this time around. Early in its deliberations, the agency asked for and received nearly 5,400 public comments, most of them from patients who blame the agency for their poorly treated pain. The CDC also made public the identities of a diverse group of physicians, academics and patients appointed to an “Opioid Workgroup” that is advising the agency. Notably, the group includes no members of PROP.
The CDC has not yet disclosed who is writing the guideline revision, although early indications are that at least one of the original three authors is involved again.
“The AMA’s focus will be to continue to advocate that CDC revise its guidelines in an open, transparent manner,” said Harmon. “We continue to urge that CDC specifically remove recommendations tied to hard thresholds and make clear that its recommendations should not be used in state laws or policies implemented by health insurance companies, pharmacy chains, or PBMs.”
Once a draft of the revised guideline is completed, there will be another public comment period later this year. The CDC may not finalize and release the updated guideline until early next year.
If you’d like to watch the July 16th CDC meeting online, you can register for it here.
