The opioid epidemic continues to have a devastating impact on communities across the country. WSHA is committed to increasing opioid stewardship in Washington, Alaska, and Oregon and is approaching this on multiple fronts—to improve opioid prescribing practices, increase access to treatment services, decrease opioid-involved overdoses and prevent future opioid dependence. One important way that we are tackling these objectives is by sharing Opioid Prescribing Feedback Reports with Washington hospital chief medical officers (CMOs).
WSHA, in partnership with the Washington State Medical Association (WSMA), released the second round of the Acute Opioid Prescribing Feedback Reports last week. The Opioid Prescribing Feedback Reports, based on Washington State Prescription Monitoring Program (PMP) data, offer a system-level snapshot of opioid prescribing behaviors by specialty group, including peer benchmarks, for the state. The current report focuses on one of the four metrics aligned with CDC and Bree Collaborative guidelines.
Intended to empower Washington State providers to be good stewards of opioid prescriptions, the Opioid Prescribing Feedback Reports give information and data directly to hospital CMOs. The system-level — specialty and even provider-specific data — that is included in the report will support member hospitals in setting targeted goals and leveraging quality improvement strategies to achieve change. WSHA distributed the first round of acute reports in June and this second round is a rolling one-year lookback that includes the third quarter of 2018 through the second quarter of 2019. Reports detailing chronic opioid use will be available in early 2020.
WSHA is committed to partnering with you to address and combat the opioid crisis and encourage effective pain management. If your hospital did not receive the first round of acute reports and/or is not already signed up to receive an Opioid Prescribing Feedback Report, there is still time! Please contact Brooke Evans at BrookeE@wsha.org for further details.
