How do you decide when to initiate buprenorphine for chronic pain?

Typically, I initiate buprenorphine for chronic pain in two scenarios:

1. The patient's providers are no longer willing to prescribe full-agonist opioids. This typically happens when there is concern about misuse. Buprenorphine is a good option for these patients because of its partial agonism, making it safer.
2. The patient hasn't had pain control with good amounts of opioids, and going up on the current opioid regimen is thought to be unlikely to help or potentially dangerous due to increasing MMEs. You can get to higher MMEs with buprenorphine in a safer way because of its partial agonism. In my experience, trialing buprenorphine for these patients is a bit of a Hail Mary and doesn't often work to control pain any better. I suspect that is b...