Category: Opioid Stewardship / Behavioral Health

Opioid and Pain Management Best Practices: Strategies for Success: Self – Assessment

Prepared by IPRO QIN-QIO, Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services Quality Improvement & Innovation Group

Use with Quality Improvement and Care Coordination: Implementing the CDC Guideline for Prescribing Opioids for Chronic Pain document and the Opioid and Pain Management Best Practice Aggregate Results Dashboard.

National Healthcare Safety Network (NHSN)Patient Safety Analysis Resource

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention

The NHSN application provides various options that allow NHSN users to analyze their surveillance data. The resources listed on the link above are intended to help you use the analysis tool, and interpret data analyzed from the Patient Safety Component of NHSN.

Interactive Training Series: CDC Guidelines for Prescribing Opioids for Chronic Pain

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)

This interactive, web-based training features self-paced learning, case-based content, knowledge checks, and integrated resources to help healthcare providers gain a deeper understanding of the CDC Guideline for Prescribing Opioids for Chronic Pain. Find tips on implementing the Guideline in primary care practice and overcoming challenges. Earn free CE.

Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs (PDMPs): Drug Overdose:

Center for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)

Clinical practice guidelines encourage use of the PDMP prior to prescribing to assess a patient’s history of controlled substance use. It is possible to improve the way opioids are prescribed, reducing the number of people who misuse, abuse, or overdose from them, while making sure patients have access to safe, effective pain management. A prescription drug monitoring program (PDMP) is an electronic database that tracks controlled substance prescriptions. PDMPs can help identify patients who may be misusing prescription opioids or other prescription drugs and who may be at risk for overdose.

Opioid Stewardship: IPRO HQIC, Learning and Action Network (LAN)

IPRO Hospital Quality Improvement (HQIC), Learning and Action Network (LAN) webinar on the All-Cause Harm focus are of Opioid Stewardship: April 26th 2021.

IPRO HQIC presented aggregate baseline data on the Opioid Stewardship Hospital Baseline Assessment and heard from a rural hospital on promoting the safe use of opioids (prescribing policy, scripted communication tools, alternatives to opioids, tracking prescribing practices, referral network for pain management, and MAT therapy).

In addition, IPRO HQIC highlight many salient opioid stewardship resources on processes that support the inclusion of patient and family engagement and health equity (stigma) in opioid stewardship efforts. These resources further support IPRO HQIC hospital efforts in All-Cause Harm reduction.

Recording, Slides and All-Cause Harm Resource available.

HHS Releases New Buprenorphine Practice Guidelines, Expanding Access to Treatment for Opioid Use Disorder

Health and Human Services (HHS) April, 2021

In an effort to get evidenced-based treatment to more Americans with opioid use disorder, the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) is releasing new buprenorphine practice guidelines that among other things, remove a longtime requirement tied to training, which some practitioners have cited as a barrier to treating more people.

Signed by HHS Secretary Xavier Becerra, the Practice Guidelines for the Administration of Buprenorphine for Treating Opioid Use Disorder exempt eligible physicians, physician assistants, nurse practitioners, clinical nurse specialists, certified registered nurse anesthetists and certified nurse midwives from federal certification requirements related to training, counseling and other ancillary services that are part of the process for obtaining a waiver to treat up to 30 patients with buprenorphine.

Creating a Culture of Safety for Opioid Prescribing: Handbook for Healthcare Executives

Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)

Healthcare executives have an important role in creating a culture for safer opioid prescribing. This handbook contains insights and advice from healthcare executives and quality improvement leaders from four different health systems representing urban, suburban and rural settings. They share their experiences engaging internal and external stakeholders, working across interdisciplinary teams, leveraging data to inform efforts, implementing training and educational efforts, and much more. Sections include:

  • The Value of Evidence-Based Opioid Prescribing
  • Collecting and Using Data
  • Engaging with External Stakeholders
  • Establishing Policies and Standards that Support Safer Opioid Prescribing Practices
  • Training and Educating Providers
  • Supporting the Continuum of Care

Partnering with Patients and Families to Strengthen Approaches to the Opioid Epidemic

Institute for Patient and Family Centered Care (IPFCC)

This whitepaper showcases the many opportunities for patients, families, and individuals with lived experience to collaborate in shaping and implementing policies and programs related to the opioid epidemic. While work in this area is evolving, several “spotlight examples” provide a starting point for thinking about new strategies and opportunities and reflect existing structures that can be utilized and expanded to accelerate the process of building meaningful partnerships.

All-Cause Harm Resource

This resource explains what All-Cause Harm is, why it is important and then dives into each of the processes it takes to prevent All-Cause Harm. Eight priority focus areas for the Hospital Quality Improvement Contract (HQIC) are illuminated and strategies to monitor compliance are provided.

All-Cause Harm Resource, Recording and Slides from the IPRO HQIC All-Cause Harm “launch” on March 29th, 2021.

Your Guide to Controlling & Managing Pain After Surgery

MHA Keystone Center

Provides education to patients related to:

  • Understanding surgical pain
  • Understanding pain after surgery
  • Questions to ask before surgery, after surgery and before discharge
  • Tools to help manage pain
  • Keeping track of pain medications and frequency
  • Common pain medication side effects

The Michigan Opioid Safety Score (MOSS): A Patient Safety and Nurse Empowerment Tool

Journal of PeriAnesthesia Nursing

The Michigan Opioid Safety Score (MOSS) was developed to incorporate patient risk, respiratory rate, and sedation into one bedside score that could be used to improve patient safety during inpatient opioid therapy. Scoring is based on a summation of risk data with objective bedside measures of over-sedation trumping a patient’s subjective reports of pain.