Chronic pain is common, multidimensional, and individualized, and treatment can be challenging for healthcare providers as well as patients. In response to the critical need for consistent and current opioid prescribing guidelines, the CDC released the Guideline for Prescribing Opioids for Chronic Pain.

This Technical Brief describes promising and innovative medication-assisted treatment (MAT) models of care in primary care settings, describe barriers to MAT implementation, summarize the evidence available on MAT models of care in primary care settings, identifies gaps in the evidence base, and guides future research.

This toolkit supports a structured, team-based approach to improving the management of patients who take opioids to ease chronic pain.