Labeling Morphine Milligram Equivalents on Opioid Packaging: a Potential Patient Safety Intervention

Given that the primary cause of overdose death in the USA is related to prescribed opioids, one potential strategy to improve awareness and decrease morbidity and/or mortality could include improved labeling. Specific patient populations which significantly struggle with adverse outcomes related to opioid abuse are seen in palliative care, chronic pain, and acute pain treatment settings.

An unexplored option for improving the healthcare quality and safety for patients currently prescribed opioids would be to require pharmaceutical companies to provide a morphine milligram equivalent (MME) on opioid packaging. Some limitations to MME conversions include equianalgesic conversions being estimates at best and may not account for variations in genetics and pharmacokinetics. Changing opioid labeling requirements is feasible as it falls under the purview of the US Food and Drug Administration (FDA), which has been mandated to provide mechanisms to reduce or to minimize overdoses related to opioid prescriptions. Labeling opioid packaging with MME per dose will promote clearer communication about opioid strength between patients and physicians. Labeling MME on packaging could help prevent prescriber errors.