Five health systems took courageous first steps toward development of enhanced surgical recovery protocols during a two-day event that focused on strategies for addressing the opioid crisis.
In April, HealthTrust hosted its first collaboration summit that brought together physicians, pharmacists, nurses and healthcare executives from five health systems to create provider-specific action plans for building an effective perioperative pain management program. Recent studies have demonstrated a connection between opioid drugs—the traditional means of alleviating post-surgical pain—and higher rates of complications. The practice has also inadvertently contributed to the ongoing opioid epidemic.
Perioperative pain management has emerged as a central tool for reducing the occurrence of this hospital-acquired condition. Summit participants LifePoint Health (Brentwood, Tennessee), Tenet Healthcare (Dallas, Texas), Community Health Systems (Franklin, Tennessee), HCA’s TriStar Division (Nashville, Tennessee) and Scripps Health (San Diego, California) are taking on the challenge of implementing sweeping changes across their organization and properly managing patient expectations prior to surgery so they understand some pain is good and should be expected.
HealthTrust has issued an executive briefing on the summit that includes sobering statistics about the growing opioid epidemic, details about the collaborative process and identifies education as the most pressing need on every front. Read the executive summary.
Share Email Opioids, Patient Experience, Performance Improvement
