Major Not-for-Profit Health System Reduces Opioid Prescriptions

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Ochsner Health, a Louisiana-based network of hospitals, health centers, and urgent care facilities, has been working to mitigate the dangers surrounding opioid abuse. To that end, Ochsner collaborated with Appriss Health to deliver one-click access to prescription drug monitoring program (PDMP) information within its electronic health record (EHR) and provide advanced analytics to help prescribers identify, prevent, and manage substance use disorder (SUD) at the point of care.

Ochsner’s efforts to reduce the impact of opioids dates back to 2015, when they established a task force and five-point plan that included development of an opioid use disorder risk tool and the creation of opioid and benzodiazepine patient registries within its EHR.

Ochsner’s initial efforts to reduce opioid prescribing resulted in a dramatic decline in opioid prescribing rates throughout the entire Ochsner health system. In 2017, however, when initial efforts began to wane, prescribing rates began to creep back up. In response, Ochsner reestablished the task force with a new focus on safety via increased point-of-care transparency around a patient’s controlled-substance prescription history and risk for substance use or opioid use disorder. In addition to reestablishing the task force, Ochsner entered collaboration with Appriss in 2017 for the aforementioned PDMP access within its EHR. Not only did the collaboration allow for streamlined PDMP access, it also eliminated the need for physicians to re-enter patient information and gave access to NarxCare, a risk analysis tool that helps physicians identify patients with, or at risk for, substance use disorder.

By implementing the transparency measures, Ochsner Health physicians are able to see how much they prescribe opioids and other controlled substances relative to their peers. Those who had been prescribing these medications at rates above their peers—particularly clinicians in primary care, urgent care, and emergency care—have reduced how much they prescribe patients, if they even prescribe an opioid at all.

Jason B. Hill, MD, the Associate Chief Medical Information Officer at Ochsner Health, noted that “Prior to implementing one-click access to PDMP, the capability of the individual provider to access opioid prescribing data for their patients was a time consuming, burdensome, difficult process requiring multiple logins and passwords. This functional limitation was the primary barrier to PDMP access for busy front-line prescribers.”

With such a seemingly successful case study, it will be interesting to see if other hospital and medical groups follow suit in implementing a similar program in an attempt to reduce opioid prescribing habits by physicians.

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