CHIME Opioid Task Force Publishes Playbook for Health IT Executives
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5.30.2019 By Ed Kopetsky – CIO, Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital |
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Patricia Lavely – Sr. Vice President and CIO Gwinnett Health System |
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Dave Lehr – CIO, Anne Arundel Medical Center |
The CHIME Opioid Task Force met a milestone recently with the publication of a playbook to help senior healthcare IT executives, providers and others combat the opioid epidemic. This resource is freely available to anyone looking for strategies to combat the opioid crisis. But as a guide written by CIOs and CMIOs, it should be especially helpful for members of CHIME and their IT teams as they roll out opioid initiatives.
Several CHIME member organizations are featured in the playbook, which offers best practices and real-world examples that illustrate how healthcare IT can be used to reduce unnecessary opioid prescriptions that are a leading cause of opioid addiction and deaths in the U.S. It is divided into eight chapters. They are:
- Creating an opioid stewardship committee
- Creating a dashboard
- Provider education and change management
- Order set maintenance and care pathways
- Electronic prescribing of controlled substances
- Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs (PDMPs)
- Patient education
- Community outreach and collaboration
It concludes with results from a survey of EHR companies about their PDMP strategies. It is available on the CHIME website as a flipbook and can be downloaded as a PDF document.
The Opioid Task Force serves as a model for collaborations that bring CIOs and their partners in industry together to address significant healthcare challenges, and the playbook shows how fruitful these interactions can be. CHIME members and CHIME Foundation members worked together, in many cases in teams assigned to a chapter. Each playbook author brought valuable knowledge and perspective to their assignment. These members deserve a special thanks for their contributions.
The playbook is designed to be easy to use and easy to update. This is important because the opioid epidemic is constantly changing, with progress made in some areas and new challenges arising in others. The task force intends to continue to identify and share innovative strategies while also eliminating practices that may no longer be relevant.
The CHIME Opioid Task Force Playbook is free and available on CHIME’s website here. We welcome your thoughts, and if you have anything you would like to share in the playbook or through our ongoing webinar series, please let the task force know by emailing [email protected].