American Society of Interventional Pain Physicians | January 31, 2018
CDC director resigns because of conflicts over financial interests
The director of the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention resigned her position on Wednesday after only half a year because of “complex financial interests” that repeatedly forced her to recuse herself from the agency's activities and kept her from testifying before lawmakers on public health issues.
According to a statement from the Health and Human Services department, Secretary Alex Azar, who was sworn in just two days ago, accepted Brenda Fitzgerald's resignation because she could  not divest  from those interests “in a definitive time period.”
Fitzgerald, 71, a physician who served as the Georgia public health commissioner until her  appointment to the CDC post  in July, said in an interview late last year that she already had divested from many stock holdings. But she and her husband were legally obligated to maintain other investments in cancer detection and health information technology, according to her ethics agreement, requiring Fitzgerald to pledge to avoid government business that might affect those interests.
 
CLICK HERE TO REGISTER
CLICK HERE FOR BROCHURE
CLICK HERE FOR HOTEL

The American Society of Interventional Pain Physicians will hold its 20th Annual Meeting March 15-17, 2018 in Orlando, Florida at Marriott Orlando World Center.

  •   Multiple topics covering Interventional Pain Management
  • 70+ physician speakers discussing over 125 interventional pain management topics and conducting numerous panel discussions
  • 8 keynote speakers enlightening attendees
  • "Excellence in IPM: Education, Research, and Advocacy"
  • 100+ exhibitors showcasing new IPM products and services
  • A luxurious stay in the stylish rooms and many amenities of Marriott Orlando World Center



Thursday General Session:
RAJ-RACZ DISTINGUISHED LECTURE SERIES
ARNOLD CAPLAN, MD, PHD - KEYNOTE SPEAKER
Mesenchymal Stem Cells: Today, Tomorrow, and Future of Pain Management
LAXMAIAH MANCHIKANTI, MD - KEYNOTE SPEAKER
Evidence Synthesis in IPM: Evolution of EBM or Death of Expertise and Truth

Friday General Session:
MANCHIKANTI DISTINGUISHED LECTURE SERIES
ROBERT LASZEWSKI - KEYNOTE SPEAKER
State of Health Care in the US: Past, Present, and Future
REPRESENTATIVE ED WHITFIELD - KEYNOTE SPEAKER
Health Care Advocacy: ASIPP Involvement with Grass Roots Advocacy Find everything you need for a successful stay.
SENATOR TIM HUTCHINSON - KEYNOTE SPEAKER
Health Care Reform: A View from Washington

Multiple breakout sessions including: Abstract and Posters; Regenerative Medicine; Resident/Fellows; Compliance, Billing and Coding; and various sessions on interventional techniques
Proposed state opioid surcharge draws support, questions
While the tax would be imposed on manufacturers or distributors, some lawmakers said they fear costs eventually would be passed on to patients.
ALBANY — As envisioned by Gov. Andrew M. Cuomo, a proposed surcharge on opioid prescriptions would raise hundreds of millions of dollars for New York and be dedicated to anti-addiction and treatment programs.
But lawmakers and activists, while cautiously supporting the concept, are raising questions about whether the new money would add to what the state already spends on such services or replace other health care funds shifted to different programs. They say it’s also uncertain how the surcharge might affect consumers or how strongly pharmaceutical companies — who say the fee would penalize “vulnerable patients” — will fight to block it.

ASIPP Abstract Submission Deadline Extended to Feb. 8

This year, we will be making significant changes to the Abstract and Poster Sessions. Submissions will be in two categories: Resident/Fellow and Physician.  Selected posters will be on display for all meeting participants during all breaks and meal times.
  
The Abstract Committee will select the top 25 for publication in Pain Physician and of those 10 will be selected for Abstract presentation and judging during the Annual Meeting. The top 3 will receive cash prizes.

Amazon, Berkshire Hathaway, JPMorgan Join Forces to Pare Health-Care Costs
Amazon.com  Inc.,  AMZN 0.80%  Berkshire Hathaway   BRK.A -0.09%  and  JPMorgan JPM -0.52%  Chase & Co. are forming a company to figure out how to reduce health-care costs for their  hundreds of thousands of U.S. employees , the three companies said Tuesday.
“The ballooning costs of health care act as a hungry tapeworm on the American economy,”  Berkshire Chief Executive Warren Buffett  said in prepared remarks. “Our group does not come to this problem with answers. But we also do not accept it as inevitable.”
Access to this article may be limited.
Opioid makers face hundreds of lawsuits for misleading doctors about drug’s addictive nature
JACKSON, Miss. — The federal judge overseeing about 200 lawsuits against opioid makers would rather  curb the opioid epidemic  than referee the litigation.
“About 150 Americans are going to die today, just today, while we’re meeting,” U.S. District Judge Dan Polster of Cleveland, Ohio, told the parties earlier this month. “And in my humble opinion, everyone shares some of the responsibility, and no one has done enough to abate it.”
Click HERE to view December issue of IPM Reports

Interventional Pain Management Reports is an Open Access online journal, a peer-reviews journal dedicated to the publication of case reports, brief commentaries and reviews and letters to the editor. It is a peer-reviewed journal written by and directed to an audience of interventional pain physicians, clinicians and basic scientists with an interest in interventional pain management and pain medicine. 

Interventional Pain Management Reports is an official publication of the American Society of Interventional Pain Physicians (ASIPP) and is a sister publication of Pain Physician . Interventional Pain Management Reports Interventional Pain Management Reports is an open access journal, available online with free full manuscripts.  

The benefits of publishing in an open access journal that has a corresponding
print edition journal are:  
  • Your article will have the potential to obtain more citations.
  • Your article will be peer-reviewed and published faster than other journals.
  • Your article can be read by a potentially much larger audience compared with traditional subscription-only journals.  
  • Open Access journals are FREE to view, download and to print.

So submit today your:
  • Case Reports
  • Technical Reports
  • Editorials
  • Short Perspectives

Click HERE to submit
FDA Cracks Down on Unapproved Addiction Meds
WASHINGTON -- The FDA and the Federal Trade Commission accused 11 companies of using "deceptive" marketing practices and failing to seek required approvals for products billed as treatments for opioid addiction or withdrawal.
Warning letters were sent to the firms , with products such as "Mitadone" and "Opiate Freedom 5-Pack," the agencies announced Wednesday.
January/February 2018 Journal Now Posted

January/February 2018 Issue Features
 
Health Policy Review
  • Buprenorphine Formulations
Systematic Reviews
  • Lumbar Spinal Stenosis
  • Middle Cervical Sympathetic Ganglion
  • Postherpetic Neuralgia Therapies
Randomized Trials
  • Pulsed Radiofrequency Improves Neuropathic Pain in Chronic Constriction Injury
  • Ultrasound-Guided Genicular Nerve Block for Knee Osteoarthritis
  • Reducing Radiation Exposure in Lumbar Transforaminal Epidural Steroid
  • Cerebral Blood Flow and Heart Rate Variability in Chronic Fatigue Syndrome
  • Intradiscal Ozone-Oxygen Injection in Patients with Low Back Pain

Click view full article pdfs available only online at:  www.painphysicianjournal.com 
Minimizing False Negatives in Urine Benzodiazepine Screening
Hydrolysis of urine before benzodiazepine immunoassay screening and optimization of the immunoassay absorbance cutoff were found to improve the rate of false-negative screening in a study published in the  Journal of Applied Laboratory Medicine .
To improve the clinical sensitivity of benzodiazepine immunoassays conducted on urine samples, researchers evaluated the effect of sample hydrolysis (n=21) and optimization of the absorbance value cutoff point (n=82) on randomly selected urine samples that tested negative for  benzodiazepines  (ie, with 0 to 99 absorbance values in immunoassays).
Opinion: Electronic Health Records: Is It Time to Uncouple Billing and Documentation Requirements?
When I was a medical student, the  electronic health record  (EHR) was where we found laboratory and imaging results. All documentation of our patient encounters was done on paper charts. Those were the days of sloppy handwriting and brief to-the-point notes. There is nothing to be missed of the rolling shelves of charts around the nurse's station or the long mornings spent chasing down patient charts that roamed around the floor like giant plastic butterflies. There is no doubt that in the age of EHR, physicians enjoy improved access to patient information and data. However, those changes also mean that other entities, such as insurance companies and regulatory agencies, also have improved access. Increased accessibility means that numerous additional regulatory and documentation requirements have impaired how physicians practice medicine.
Efficacy of Tamper-Resistant Controlled-Release Oxycodone
HealthDay News — The tamper-resistant formulation of controlled-release oxycodone in Australia reduced tampering among high-risk populations, according to a study published online in  The Lancet Psychiatry .
Briony Larance, PhD, from the University of New South Wales in Sydney, and colleagues assessed multiple data sources, including an interrupted time-series analyses of opioid sales data and multiple routinely collected health datasets; followed a cohort of people who previously tampered with pharmaceutical opioids; and analyzed annual surveys of injection drug users.
Prescription Opioid Use Linked to Increased Satisfaction for Some Patients
HealthDay News — Patients with musculoskeletal conditions who are using prescribed opioids are more likely to be highly satisfied with their care, according to a study published in the  Annals of Family Medicine .
Brian D. Sites, MD, from the University of Pennsylvania in Philadelphia, and colleagues used data from the 2008 to 2014 Medical Expenditure Panel Survey to assess whether prescription  opioid use  is associated with satisfaction with care among 19,566 US adults who had musculoskeletal conditions.
 
Blog: How Can Physicians Stay Sane?
These are tumultuous times for practicing physicians. The healthcare landscape is changing at a breathtaking pace, and less and less of our time is spent doing what we were actually trained to do: taking care of patients. I absolutely love the patient-care part of my job, do everything possible to always remember why I went to medical school in the first place, and maintain focus on the aspects of my work that bring me the most personal satisfaction.
Here are my 10 rules for front-line physician sanity:
1.  Clearly separate clinical from bureaucratic work . 
Pain Management Challenges In Severely Obese Patients
Obesity rates have increased substantially in recent years, with an estimated prevalence in 2013 and 2014 of 37.9% among Americans over age 20 years, according to the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention. 1  Previous findings have linked excessive weight and obesity with a reduction in life expectancy comparable with that observed among cigarette smokers, in addition to increased morbidity and healthcare costs. 2
A major challenge in treating patients who are obese is their altered pharmacokinetic profile, which can accompany physiologic changes in this population. 3  “Derangements in cardiovascular and respiratory physiology make patients with morbid obesity more vulnerable to drug-induced respiratory depression and upper airway obstruction, thus increasing the risk of treating them with opioids,” wrote the authors of a recent review article. 4
State Society News 
April 18-22, 2018
GSIPP 2018 Annual Meeting
Georgia Society of Interventional Pain Physicians
Thursday, April 18, 2018 - Sunday, April 22, 2018
The Ritz Carlton Reynolds, Lake Oconee

July 19-22, 2018
FSIPP 2018 Annual Meeting, Conference, and Trade Show
Florida Society of Interventional Pain Physicians
One South County Road, Palm Beach, FL 33480

Send in your state society meeting news to Holly Long, hlong@asipp.org
ASIPP | Pain Physician Journal | Phone | Fax | Email