A Single Point of Access for frontline practitioners
PAINWeekEnd Scottsdale 2019 | Saturday 3/23/19 to Sunday 3/24/19
This is a 2-day meeting and will provide 12 CE/CME credits.
Practicing Healthcare Professionals: $199
In order to maintain the clinical nature of the conference, nonclinicians—including, but not limited to, office managers, billing specialists, receptionists, and administrative staff; guests, spouses, friends, and/or family members—may not attend PAINWeekEnd.
Unfortunately, we do not have discounts available on hotel rooms. Please contact the hotel directly should you require accommodations.
Hilton Scottsdale Resort & Villas
6333 N Scottsdale Rd.
Scottsdale, AZ 85250
Get Directions using Google Maps
Download a printable version of the agenda >>
Faculty and courses are subject to change. Please refer to the online agenda below for the most recent course descriptions.
To view the agenda below, click on the + sign next to the day of the conference to expand the conference agenda. Click on the + signs within the agenda to view the course description, UAN number, and AANP pharmacology credits.
*not certified for credit
Coffee will be served.
Despite high prevalence and seemingly continuous attention, the clinical challenges associated with assessing, treating, and managing patients with chronic pain continue to persist. Many different forces are at play and responsible for this frequently frustrating situation and, as is often the case, the person with the most at risk is the patient with chronic pain. There is no deficit of opinions for possible solutions to this problem. In fact, the number of potential solutions seems to increase each year, all with the intent of helping pain care be more safe and effective, and most trying to stem the negative consequences of abuse, misuse, and diversion of prescription pain medications. Clinicians have had to juggle these good intentions along with the fear of regulatory scrutiny. This course will present and detail the variety of current regulatory forces that need to be considered in clinical practice; how they can potentially impact clinical decisions regarding chronic pain; and how they can be negotiated. A number of regulatory agencies are now “sitting at the pain management table” for the foreseeable future and it is critical to navigate the waters without sacrificing that most important stakeholder: the patient.
Breakfast will be served.
Sponsored by Teva Pharmaceuticals.
West Virginia continues to lead the nation, and world, in drug overdoses, which makes one ponder what is being done at the “ground zero” of the opioid epidemic to save and improve lives. Where better than where it’s worst should some of the possible solutions come from? In 2016, an interprofessional panel of experts in pain management—ranging from medicine, osteopathy, nursing, pharmacy, dentistry; public health; the state PDMP; and representatives from insurance providers—was put together with aims of finding possible solutions. The West Virginia Safe & Effective Management of Pain (SEMP) Guidelines (www.sempguidelines.org) were developed to facilitate the shift of the best practices in pain management becoming the new standard of care. The SEMP Guidelines include 2 main components including the risk reduction strategy and the clinical treatment algorithms. Pain management algorithms are not available anywhere else in the entire world! So we would like to welcome you to “the West Virginia Way” and see just how the “wild and wonderful” state of West Virginia is approaching the opioid epidemic from a true ground zero. After all, if it works where it’s worst, how could it not help your state or your practice?
The most contentious, poorly understood analgesics today are methadone and buprenorphine. This fast paced course will equip practitioners with immediately implementable practical tips regarding when and how to use these analgesics, including dosage formulations, routes of delivery, appropriate use in therapy, drug interactions, dosage titration (both up and down), opioid conversion calculations, and more. All discussions will be aimed at enhancing clinical, economic, and humanistic outcomes on the individual patient and health system level.
Lunch will be served.
Sponsored by SCILEX.
There is a growing opioid epidemic and our role as providers and patient leaders in the community cannot be overstated. We need to recognize the growing burden of this problem as well as the role of all stakeholders in addressing the opioid epidemic in their communities. What is the prevalence, nationally and locally, for opioid use and prescribing? Where are the growing pockets and populations of opioid use? What is the Drug Enforcement Agency’s perspective from the front lines? In this course you learn how to apply knowledge of acute and chronic pain pathways and underlying mechanisms to clinical assessment and appropriate management of pain. Through the use of a 3D presentation, the differences between acute and chronic pain pathways and pain points and specific targets for opioids—appropriate and inappropriate—will be demonstrated. We will evaluate current clinical workflows for opioid prescribing, incorporating 2 best practice strategies to optimize safe and competent prescribing and minimize potential for abuse and diversion. Discussed will be working with patients to develop multimodal pain strategies; how to minimize the risk for diversion and abuse; and safe disposal of medications. After this course, you will be able to access resources and guidelines to recognize and treat patients with opioid use disorder and integrate into practice concepts from novel programs in the community to address opioid overdose and treat patients with opioid use disorder.
Presented by CME Outfitters and USF Health. Supported by an educational grant from Johnson & Johnson.
Click here to download the slides for this presentation.
Refreshments will be served.
Sponsored by Emergent BioSolutions.
Throughout the course of history, mankind has experienced heightened effects from natural sources, and even delved into creating or modifying substances to the same accord. In our society we have a very objective classification of materials based on generally accepted medical use and propensity to become habit forming. However, as one can recall with ethyl alcohol (such as beer, wine, and hard liquor), a substance may not actually chemically change, yet can move across legal classifications. How does that happen? Well, join our discussion to learn how numerous illicit substances have similar, if not the same, mechanisms of action as legal prescription medications readily available today. One may even walk away with a few pointers from “street chemists” that are not easily available in any of our professional textbooks.
There is a significant amount of media, political, and public attention paid to the opioid crisis/opioid epidemic in the United States today. With the seemingly ever-increasing number of opioid-related overdoses and fatalities, there has been a feverish push by stakeholders to diminish the amount of opioids prescribed in order to help stem these worrisome trends. Unfortunately, there may be a lack of focus regarding the true definition and characterization of the opioid epidemic. There may also be a rush to judgment about the role of appropriately prescribed opioid analgesics in the addiction crisis we face today as well. This presentation will discuss the roles and statistics of both prescription and illicit opioids (namely heroin and fentanyl) in today's "opioid overdose epidemic" with the intention of clarifying important differences and similarities between these competing epidemics including concerns and clinical considerations specific to each of them. Additionally, this program will examine and identify how these medications and drugs share potentially tragic adverse effect profiles in many cases. However, it is important for clinicians to make sure that appropriate chronic pain patients that may be candidates for opioid analgesic therapy aren't penalized, and still get the treatment that they deserve.
Coffee will be served.
On March 15, 2016, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention released their guideline with recommendations for primary care clinicians who prescribe opioids for chronic pain outside of active cancer treatment, palliative care, and end-of-life care. Although most of the recommendations were supported by weak or very weak evidence, Recommendation # 7 stated that “clinicians should optimize other therapies and work with patients to taper opioids to lower dosages or to taper and discontinue opioids” if the harms outweigh the benefits. At least a year after the release of the CDC guideline, several states have implemented dosage triggers, ceilings, and involuntary tapers, and some healthcare professionals have reportedly subjected their patients to involuntary tapers because they believed the CDC guideline required it. Consequently, this session will explore the ethical, legal, and clinical concerns and potential harms associated with the involuntary tapering of patients on long-term opioid therapy as a result of a state law, regulation, or out of fear of regulatory sanction by the healthcare provider.
Breakfast will be served.
Sponsored by Daiichi Sankyo, Inc.
On September 16, 2015, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC), hosted a semi-public webinar where they revealed a draft of their twelve (12) prescribing guidelines for chronic pain. After concerns over the limited amount of participation was raised by the pain community, and following a congressional inquiry, the CDC offered an extended open comment period. In March 2016 the CDC’s final guidelines were released and although voluntary, many states and regulatory authorities have adopted them with little recognition of the limitations stated in the guideline itself. This presentation will examine the impact of the guidelines on patient care, health care providers, and unintentional overdose.
Overdose—a small word that packs a major punch, and a big reason for many recent legal regulatory changes in controlled substance prescribing and pain management. Too many physicians and allied healthcare practitioners are caught unawares by the legal issues surrounding overdose events, fatal and nonfatal. Often, prescribers are the last to learn about an overdose event and, worse yet, fail to take action once notified. Through a series of case examples, attendees will learn how to develop and implement overdose event policies and protocols. Attendees will receive copies of sample policies and protocols and learn how to tailor them to their respective practices and state licensing board framework. Professional licensing board and criminal cases involving overdose events do not usually end well for the prescriber, but there is much the prescriber can do proactively to signal his/her intent to get things right. While prescribers cannot control what their patients do once they leave the medical office, they are responsible for establishing a safe framework for opioid prescribing, including a proper response when something goes wrong.
Marijuana (MJ) and hemp are genetically distinct cousins of the genus Cannabis sativa L., yet they have been erroneously associated with each other for the past 80 years. That all changed in December 2018 when Congress removed hemp from the federal Controlled Substances Act (CSA) and legalized the plant and its derivatives such as cannabidiol (CBD), a substance which has received a great deal of attention for its potential to treat a variety of medical conditions. This change is historic and has enormous implications in medicine and the treatment of pain. However, although the oversight of hemp has essentially been transferred from the DEA to the USDA and individual states, the FDA still retains its authority “to regulate products containing cannabis or cannabis-derived compounds” such as CBD. Accordingly, in an effort to inform healthcare professionals about this rapidly changing field, this presentation will discuss the history of hemp, its legality, derivatives, and its potential future in pain treatment.
The subject of the medical use of cannabinoids has become an extremely hot topic. Unfortunately, there has been a tendency to equate medical cannabinoids with another very contentious topic: Medical Marijuana. In this presentation, the distinction between medical cannabinoids and medical cannabis will be explored. Specifically, the challenges facing prescribers who are being asked to prescribe medical marijuana will be examined.
2018 was not a good year to be on the wrong side of medical necessity when it came to drug testing and ongoing prescribing of controlled medication or substance abuse treatment programs. 2019 is likely to be an expensive year for those who do not proactively take steps to understand medical necessity for drug testing, prescribing controlled medication, and ongoing substance abuse treatment, as payers continue to carefully scrutinize these areas. Using a series of case hypotheticals, attendees will learn how to identify the elements of medical necessity, efficiently and effectively document medical necessity for drug testing and use of drug test results in the ongoing care of the patient, and locate and use payer medical policies and coverage determinations. Attendees will be given 3 tools to reinforce learning objectives: a checklist for medical necessity documentation, sample summaries of payer medical policies, and templates for documenting use of drug test results and tailoring ongoing treatment decisions to the individual patient.
To accompany and enrich your experience at the PAINWeekEnd conference, be sure to attend one or more of the sponsored programs, which are scheduled during breakfast, lunch, and afternoon "Brain Food" time slots in the schedule. There is NO ADDITIONAL CHARGE to attend these program sessions!