The new sources complement a growing list of tools being added to the AAFP’s Center for Women’s Health to make sure members all the time have the most recent details about reproductive well being and different medical subjects they should look after sufferers and handle practices.

“Family physicians are often a patient’s first point of contact for any medical questions or concerns, including questions about reproductive health,” stated Danielle Carter, M.D., FAAFP, a member of the Academy’s Commission on Health of the Public and Science who helped AAFP employees create the brand new sources. “Given the confusion surrounding the function and availability of emergency contraception, the time-sensitive nature of its use and the time constraints associated with a busy day in the office, having a quick reference like this will be beneficial to patients and physicians alike.” 

The abstract features a desk describing the strategies of emergency contraception at the moment out there within the United States and clarifies that emergency contraception shouldn’t be confused with abortifacients. It additionally supplies medical steering on follow-up care.

The FAQ addresses greater than a dozen frequent affected person questions on emergency contraception, protecting the way it works, when and the way quickly to make use of it, and what unwanted effects it might trigger. The FAQ contains tables with solutions about particular strategies of emergency contraception.

Both sources draw from an award-winning AFP review article on evidence-based contraception, with supplemental data from different companies, such because the World Health Organization and the American College of Obstetricians and Gynecologists.

Carter stated household physicians can simply combine components of the FAQ into present affected person handouts or in-office instructional supplies.

“Physicians can use these as a quick reference during patient care, or even to confidently develop protocols for advice and/or prescriptions to be given by triage or office nursing staff,” she stated.

Carter added that emergency contraception must be mentioned as a part of a complete reproductive care plan, particularly for individuals who don’t want being pregnant and don’t use one other type of contraception.

“While most patients do request emergency contraception episodically, patients should be counseled at preventive care visits about how to obtain it and the timing of its use,” Carter stated. “It is equally important that patients feel empowered to have these discussions with their physicians.”

Protecting Clinicians’ Rights, Patient Access

The AAFP created the brand new abstract and FAQ because the Biden administration issued new steering to guard clinicians’ rights of conscience and sufferers’ entry to emergency and contraception care, which aligns with Academy advocacy.

A closing rule titled Safeguarding the Rights of Conscience as Protected by Federal Statutes, which takes impact on March 11, partly rescinds a 2019 coverage that may have eliminated federal funding from well being care services that required clinicians to carry out providers or make referrals for providers that went towards the clinicians’ ethical or spiritual beliefs. The rule doesn’t alter present conscience protections; as an alternative, it costs HHS’ Office for Civil Rights with fielding complaints, specifies which conscience legal guidelines the OCR will implement and the way, and encourages doctor practices and different lined entities to voluntarily put up discover of conscience rights.

The rule strengthens protections for clinicians who decline to take part in care that violates their private ethics. The AAFP Congress of Delegates known as on the Academy to advocate for such protections in a 2021 resolution. Last 12 months the AAFP told HHS in a letter that the rule as proposed struck an acceptable stability between upholding clinicians’ proper to not take part in non-emergency care they really feel violates their private morals and making certain acceptable entry to look after all sufferers, particularly traditionally marginalized populations.

“The AAFP makes a clear distinction between declining to participate in a procedure based on moral grounds versus denying access to care to an individual patient,” the letter stated. “Declining to participate in a procedure based on moral grounds is a protected right; declining to care for specific groups of people or individuals without adequate notice or an appropriate referral is an unacceptable shirking of health care professionals’ responsibility to care for patients and is contrary to the key underpinnings of the Code of Medical Ethics.” 

An updated FAQ in regards to the rule highlights a number of different factors that will have an effect on household physicians, together with:

• “Reasonable medical management techniques” for contraceptives can’t embody step remedy, age-related restrictions, extreme administrative necessities or required cost-sharing for ancillary providers.
• Contraceptive medicine and drug-led units shall be thought of therapeutic equivalents to different merchandise if they’re listed as such within the FDA Orange Book.
• Plans and issuers should have “easily accessible, transparent and sufficiently expedient” exception processes that enable sufferers to entry — with out cost-sharing — the precise contraceptive drug or drug-led gadget that their doctor determines to be medically needed.

More Physician Resources On the Way

The AAFP’s Center for Women’s Health is a hub that may proceed to develop with medical steering, journal articles, information tales, advocacy updates and different sources from the AAFP and exterior organizations. Bookmark the web page for the most recent sources because the Academy expands its choices on girls’s well being subjects all year long.

Members can be taught extra about household medication being pregnant care in mild of the U.S. Supreme Court’s determination in Dobbs v. Jackson Women’s Health Organization case in an online CME course. A brand new on-demand CME exercise on reproductive well being is scheduled to launch in March on the Academy’s On Demand CME page.