The Vermont Health Department is working to ensure that health care providers are ready for new rules that regulate how opioid painkillers are prescribed while minimizing the risk of misuse. On July 1, Vermont health care providers must comply with the rules, which include limits on the number of pills that can be prescribed and requirements that new users be briefed about the dangers of the drugs. Provides also must check a patients' history to see if opioid drugs have been prescribed elsewhere.
The new rules also require that when patients are prescribed strong doses of opioid painkillers, or have also been prescribed a class of tranquilizers, they must also be prescribed the overdose reversal drug naloxone. When the drugs, known as benzodiazepines, are taken along with opioids they can be more likely to lead to overdoses, which can be reversed with naloxone.
