Caring for “Legacy Patients” on High Dose Opioids

This module will teach providers how to have a conversation with patients who have been on high-dose opioid regimens from previous prescribers about the risks versus benefits of continuing the regimen versus decreasing doses. Providers will learn when and how to taper opioids if needed, and how to monitor/document ongoing high-dose opioid regimens.

 

 

Target Audience

MDs/DOs

Nurse practitioners and other advanced- practice registered nurses 

Physician assistants

 

Learning Objectives

  1. Identify patients appropriate for continuation of chronic opioid therapy & discuss expectations.
  2. Implement appropriate monitoring of chronic opioid therapy and how to minimize side effects and adverse outcomes. Discuss how to address opioid misuse and concomitant substance use disorder.
  3. Examine how to safely and effectively discontinue chronic opioid therapy.
Course summary
Available credit: 
  • 1.00 AMA PRA Category 1 Credit™
Course opens: 
01/02/2026
Course expires: 
01/01/2029
Rating: 
0

Don Stader, MD FACEP is a board certified emergency and addiction medicine physician, opioid expert, film producer & social entrepreneur. Don works at Swedish Medical Center in Englewood, CO where he served as section chair of emergency medicine and associate ED medical director prior to focusing on medical consulting. Don holds a medical degree with honors from Baylor College of Medicine and attended emergency medicine residency at Carolinas Medical Center. He is the Medical Director of the Compass Opioid Stewardship Program, a nationwide initiative to improve pain control, prescribing habits, addiction treatment and opioid stewardship for primary care clinicians. Don is also the founder and chair of the Colorado Naloxone Project one of the most ambitious national efforts to engage hospitals and clinicians in opioid overdose risk recognition, education and naloxone dispensing. As of March 2022, the project has engaged over 107 hospitals and distributed over 10,000 doses of naloxone.

 Don is a recognized physician leader as is the Past President of the
Colorado chapter of the American College of Emergency Physicians (COACEP) and former President of the Emergency Medicine Residents’ Association (EMRA). He is the founder and past chair of Colorado ACEP's Opioid Task Force, the Editor-in-Chief of COACEP's 2017 Opioid Prescribing & Treatment Guidelines and the CO's CURE’s guidelines on pain control and opioid stewardship. Don served for over 2 years as the Senior Pain Management & Opioid Policy Physician Adviser for the Colorado Hospital Association and serves on multiple national and local committees addressing the opioid epidemic in Colorado and across the nation, he is the current chair of ACEP’s Pain & Addiction Management Section.

 He is the founder and president of Stader Opioid Consulting, a company that provides opioid and ALTO related education, policy and quality improvement services to hospitals, government organizations and physician groups. He is a well known national lecturer on the opioid epidemic, emergency department pain control, opioid stewardship, treatment of chronic and acute pain, opioid use disorders, medication for addiction treatment and harm reduction.

Accreditation: This activity has been planned and implemented in accordance with the accreditation requirements and policies of the Iowa Medical Society (IMS) through the joint providership of Compass Healthcare Collaborative and Colorado Consortium for Prescription Drug Abuse Prevention. Compass Healthcare Collaborative is accredited by the IMS to provide continuing medical education for physicians.

Designation: Compass designates this live activity for a maximum of 1.0 AMA PRA Category 1 Credit(s)™ Physicians should claim only the credit commensurate with the extent of their participation in the activity.

Commercial Support: This activity was developed without support from any ineligible company. *The ACCME defines ineligible companies as those whose primary business is producing, marketing, selling, re-selling, or distributing healthcare products used by or on patients. Note: The ACCME does not consider providers of clinical service directly to patients to be commercial interests unless the provider of clinical services is owned, or controlled by, and ACCME defined ineligible company.

Disclosure: Compass adheres to the Standards for Integrity and Independence in Accredited Continuing Education. The content of this activity is not related to products or the business lines of an ACCME-defined ineligible company. None of the planners or moderators for this educational activity have relevant financial relationships to disclose with ineligible companies whose primary business is producing, marketing, selling, re-selling, or distributing products used by or on patients.

Available Credit

  • 1.00 AMA PRA Category 1 Credit™
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