Patient FAQs & Additional Resources

 FAQs for Your Patients (download & print)

• Clinical Drug Monitoring
• Medication Adherence

 Videos (View)

• Why Every Physician Needs to Integrate Clinical Drug Monitoring into their Practice 
• How to Set the Stage for a Clinical Drug Monitoring Program with Your Patient 
• How to Share Clinical Drug Monitoring Results with Your Patient 

 Additional Resources

• About Opioid Patient-Prescriber Agreements
• Sample Opioid Patient Agreement forms
  • FDA
  • Washington State
• Sample Risk-Assessment Screening Tools for Drug Abuse or Misuse
  • COMM^® (Current Opioid Misuse Measure)
  • DIRE (Diagnosis, Intractability, Risk, Efficacy)
  • ORT (Opioid Risk Tool)
  • SOAPP-R^® (Screener and Opioid Assessment for Patients with Pain)

Guidelines that call for clinical drug monitoring and testing in patients

• Guideline for Prescribing Opioids for Chronic Pain (see Recommendation 10)
• American Academy of Pain Medicine
• American Chronic Pain Association
• American Society of Interventional Pain Physicians (see Pain Physician 2012; 15:S67-S116 • ISSN 1533-3159)
• Federation of State Medical Boards
• US Departments of Veterans Affairs and Defense
• Washington State Agency Medical Directors’ Group

Peer support for clinical drug monitoring and testing in patients

• “Rational Urine Drug Monitoring in Patients Receiving Opioids for Chronic Pain: Consensus Recommendations,” by Argoff CE, Alford DP, Fudin J, et al, 2017.  
• “Urine drug testing in clinical practice: The art and science of patient care,” by Gourlay D, Heit H, Caplan Y at the Center for Independent Healthcare Education, 2015. 
• “Urine drug testing: current recommendations and best practices,” by Owen GT, Burton AW, Schade CM, Passik S, 2012. 

Related Articles

• Urine Drug Monitoring: Strategies for ordering, understanding, and communicating opioid therapy screening results
• Assessment and Monitoring of Pain: Urine Drug Screening
• Urine Drug Testing: What is Optimal Frequency and Duration?
• Interpreting Negative Urine Drug Test Results
• Random versus Scheduled: Maximizing the Efficacy of Urine Drug Monitoring
• Demystifying Benzodiazepine Urine Drug Screen Results
• Half of Americans Tested Misuse Their Prescription Medications
• What’s the safest, effective way to taper a patient off of opioid therapy?