“Nurse anesthetists can give any drug in the [operating room]; they put you under; and they’re very trained in pain management”… that would seem an obvious category to consider,” Admiral Brett Giroir, MD, assistant secretary for health and senior advisor for opioid policy at HHS, told MedPage Today Thursday at a reporter briefing on the opioid crisis. “Nurse midwives could be another group you might consider; we do support that being considered by Congress to expand those categories.”
Giroir was referring to H.R. 3692, a bill now being considered in Congress — as part of a large appropriations package — that would allow clinical nurse specialists, nurse anesthetists, nurse midwives, and other non-physician clinicians to prescribe buprenorphine and other treatments to opioid use disorder patients. The provision is not included in the Senate version of the appropriations package, and negotiators from both chambers were working Friday to craft a compromise bill, which must be approved by the House and Senate before being sent to the president for his signature. It was unclear at presstime whether the provision would be included in the compromise bill.”
Read more at: https://www.medpagetoday.com/psychiatry/opioids/75252
Source: MedPageToday.com – September 21, 2018
