Video conference will offer docs updates on opioid alternatives

UAMS is creating a free weekly online education service for prescribers to learn about managing chronic pain and reducing opioid prescriptions.

Arkansas Improving Multidisciplinary Pain Care Treatment (AR-IMPACT) this first year is being funded by a $104,125 grant from Arkansas Blue Cross Blue Shield and $49,000 from the office of the state drug director.

The service and grants were announced during a press conference at the Capitol Monday.

The weekly telecasts will occur at noon on Wednesdays and will feature specialists presenting multidisciplinary pain management approaches. Physicians can register by going to www.arimpact.uams.edu. They can earn one hour of continuing education credit for every hour they participate. They are required to earn 20 hours per year. The videos will be archived.

In 2016, Arkansas was second in the nation in prescribed opioids – 114.6 prescriptions for every 100 Arkansans. Arkansas Drug Director Kirk Lane said that number had been reduced unofficially to about 108 in 2017, though the state doesn’t yet have a ranking.

Saturday was the state’s 15th Arkansas Take Back program, the annual event where Arkansans dispose of unused and outdated medication at locations across the state. Lane said results have not yet been tabulated from that event, but the state has collected and destroyed more than 131 tons of unused and outdated prescription medication – third in the nation per capita.

Gov. Asa Hutchinson opened the press conference by giving to Lane a bottle of 12 out-of-date hydrocodone pills he had found in his medicine chest.

Hutchinson said he asked town leaders and law enforcement officials in Waldron last week about their most serious drug problem, expecting to be told it was methamphetamine. Instead, he was told it is prescription drug and opioid abuse. He said children are looking for prescription drugs in neighbors’ medicine cabinets, and the drugs are being abused and sold on the street.