Boost opioid stewardship program investments by empowering pharmacists and health system leaders with clinical tools for opioid use visibility.
Even today, years after the human and financial costs of the opioid crisis became apparent, the country continues to struggle to find a way out. Hospitals and health systems are trying to do their part with opioid stewardship programs, but the challenge is complex, and having a substantive impact can be elusive.
A recent survey revealed that nearly two-thirds of health system respondents had increased their investments in opioid stewardship over the past year. Educating providers and the public, implementing alternative pain management approaches, placing limits on doses and quantities, performing drug diversion investigations, and leveraging technology to help monitor prescriptions are all priorities.
In many cases, the increased investments are buttressed by an emerging understanding of what makes an opioid stewardship program successful.
Three elements are particularly important in creating a tightly managed, strategically informed approach
Trust and support
Successful programs garner buy-in throughout the health system by building trust among the many stakeholders needed to address this challenge. Having senior leadership’s full support is particularly important for building that trust.
Pharmacy leadership
Successful programs also know how to take advantage of the skill set of clinical pharmacists. Giving those pharmacists the resources and support needed to drive effective change is essential.
A powerful clinical surveillance tool
Equipping pharmacists and health system leadership with a powerful clinical surveillance tool that creates the necessary visibility into opioid use and the health system’s mitigation efforts is the central piece of implementing, monitoring, measuring, and refining a successful program.
This article drills down into the third element, using Steward Health Care’s opioid stewardship program as an example.
Setting up an opioid stewardship program for success
Steward is the largest private, tax-paying healthcare network in the United States, with 33 hospitals, more than 25 urgent care centers, 107 preferred skilled nursing facilities, and more than 7,900 beds to manage across eight states. After addressing the first two elements of a successful program, Steward wrote and integrated a number of critical opioid stewardship rules into its existing Sentri7 clinical surveillance tool. Steward chose Sentri7 because of its powerful data capture capabilities and robust analytics that interact effectively with the health system’s EHR.
Steward based its rules and their corresponding metrics on the American Hospital Association’s Stem the Tide project. That project asserts the ideal metrics for opioid stewardship:
- Address a problem in the hospital/health system or community
- Support efforts with up-to-date and evidence-based internal guidelines, policies, or procedures
- Show success or a need for improvement with established goals and are longitudinal
- Identify variations between departments, units, or prescribers
- Guard against any unforeseen consequence with effective countermeasures
- Recognize meaningful outcomes in acute pain management
- Reduce opioid overuse, misuse, and adverse events in acute care settings
These principles translate into ensuring your clinical surveillance tool for opioid stewardship can effectively offer elements that include:
- Readily available, real-time, milligrams morphine equivalent (MME) scores
- Efficient, real-time identification of opioid-related intervention opportunities
- Easily accessed opioid stewardship interventions for all pharmacy staff
In a webinar with Steward Health Care, Steward shared how they successfully established a robust opioid stewardship program across facilities in the health system. Access the webinar to learn more and continue reading for highlights and key takeaways.
