In 2017, the Washington State Legislature passed HB 1427, which mandated that boards and commissions for five prescribing professions (dental, medical, nursing, osteopathic, and podiatric) enact comprehensive opioid prescribing rules.  The bill also expanded access to Prescription Monitoring Program (PMP) data to multiple audiences using newly created reporting methods. 

Using best practice guidelines, including the Agency Medical Directors’ Group and CDC guidelines, the professions have recently adopted rules for acute, subacute, and perioperative prescribing and they amended their existing chronic pain rules. The rules also provide direction to practitioners in a variety of other areas of opioid prescribing, including patient notification for opioid risks, storage and disposal; use of alternative therapies for pain; continuing education requirements; co-prescribing of naloxone with high-dose opioid prescriptions; and registration and use of the Prescription Monitoring Program, or PMP.

Find out how what these new regulations say and don’t say and what they mean for opioid prescribing in the future. The session will also talk about education and outreach resources available to prescribers, patients and the public on the opioid rules.