New Chronic Pain Guideline the Product of Painstaking Process

Colorado’s Division of Workers’ Compensation has released a draft update to its medical treatment guidelines for chronic pain, more than doubling the length of the section on opioid prescribing. The guidelines now specify a threshold dose for opioids at which a doctor should consider tapering the dosage or referring the patient to a pain or addiction specialist. The threshold dose of 90 morphine milligram equivalents per day is the same as that cited in the Centers for Disease Control’s opioid prescribing guideline released in March 2015. CDC says doctors should avoid e...