Description
CAP’s latest webinar, Good Outcomes in an Era of Tough Choices: Legal Risks and Solutions for Opioid Prescribers, will cover the latest laws and legal challenges surrounding the opioid crisis, and will help answer the fundamental question: How do I treat patients with compassion and care in a medically sound and legally safe way?
This webinar is presented by Steve Meister, criminal defense lawyer and the owner of Meister Law Offices in Los Angeles, California. At the conclusion of the webinar, Mr. Meister mentioned CAP’s Risk Management and Patient Safety Department being available to conduct practice site visits to assess and minimize risks when writing opioid prescriptions. The goal of the visit is to educate providers, protect patients, and provide tools, guidelines, and resources from important stakeholders and governmental agencies such as the Medical Board of California (MBC) and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC).
Both the MBC and CDC guidelines provide information about best practices for prescribing opioids, options for non-pharmacological treatment of pain symptoms, and recommendations for those patients presenting with symptoms of addiction. We urge physicians to follow recommended prescribing guidelines from the CDC, American Academy of Pain Medicine, and the MBC when writing opioid prescriptions. We also strongly recommend reviewing the CURES/PDMP database for patients receiving controlled substances to prevent overdose and death.
Working together, we hope to ensure that physicians have access to reliable resources and support to help improve patient pain management, reduce risk, and improve patient safety in their practice.
The risk practice visit and assessment is only intended to provide general awareness of common and possible risks of liability. The visit is not intended to be an exhaustive or comprehensive assessment. The information provided during the visit is not intended to be, nor should it be interpreted as, legal advice. For a legal assistance opinion, please consult an attorney.
Contributors
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Steve Meister
Steve Meister is a criminal defense lawyer and the owner of Meister Law Offices in Los Angeles, California. An accomplished professional with numerous published works and television and radio news credits, Mr. Meister is the co-owner of ScripRight Healthcare Consultants, LLC, a healthcare consulting firm focused on compliance, risk management and patient safety for controlled substance prescribers and dispensers.
During his tenure as an attorney, Mr. Meister has served in a variety of roles beyond heading his own firm. He was the Deputy District Attorney for Los Angeles County from 1990 until 1998, and then spent a year as an insurance defense attorney. Following that position, Mr. Meister focused his career on criminal defense. Mr. Meister has taught local, regional, and national courses on a variety of legal topics and is a member of the American Health Lawyers Association, the Southern California Association of Healthcare Risk Managers, and the California Public Defenders Association.