New Hanover Regional Medical Center has implemented new prescribing guidelines aimed at curbing the misuse and abuse of opioids in the local community, officials announced Tuesday.

The new guidelines were established as of Oct. 17 and align with provisions of the North Carolina STOP Act that go into effect Jan. 1, according to a news release from New Hanover Regional. Gov. Roy Cooper signed into law the Strengthen Opioid Misuse Prevention (STOP) Act of 2017 on June 29.

"Nationwide there's a large epidemic problem, and obviously we are dealing with the same thing here locally. There's a lot of tactics we are trying to do to mitigate things moving forward," said Kevin Cannon, an NHRMC physician who chaired the physician task force that developed the guidelines for the hospital.
 
NHRMC's new guidelines, which apply to both the hospital and NHRMC Physician Group, establish a system that allows for opioids to be used for effective pain management while setting more structure around when they are prescribed and for how long, officials said in the release. The guidelines also call on providers to discuss the known risks and benefits of opioids with patients, so they understand when to discontinue the use of opioids and how to dispose of unused medication. 

"What we are doing is twofold," Cannon said. One is being able to provide practitioners with standardized methods of prescribing pain medications, he said, and another is highlighting options that are available, first looking into non-narcotic pain medications. The new guidelines also establish writing for tapered doses as well.

When opioids are needed, the guidelines call upon prescribers to make the order electronically and prescribe the lowest effective dosage, officials said in the release. On discharge, prescriptions for acute pain will be limited to three to five days, with the exception of acute post-operative pain, which could be extended to seven days.

"Historically, a lot of times when people go home with pain medicines, a lot of times they are just given ... a quantity of pills and then just told to take one to two every six hours as needed and then just run out. But this will actually initiate a tapering dose, so that over the course of three, five or seven days, that hopefully, you can actually be off the pain medicine entirely," Cannon said.

NHRMC is also encouraging the community to play a part by safely disposing of unneeded medications and provides a list of locations to drop off unused medications. 

“As practitioners, it’s universally acknowledged that we need to do more to prevent opioid misuse,” Cannon said in the release. “Now we’re helping practitioners with evidence-based guidelines to provide patients with the pain management they need while reducing the risks for misuse.”

The announcement by New Hanover Regional comes a day before N.C. Attorney General Josh Stein's visit to the Wilmington area. Stein will be joined by local leaders to launch the national expansion of CVS Health’s drug disposal program, in an event at the CVS Pharmacy at 4600 Oleander Drive on Wednesday.

The program will, for the first time, allow the public to bring unused medication to select CVS Pharmacy locations for safe, environmentally friendly disposal, officials with CVS Health said in a news release.