PO - Improve & Expand Screening & Testing for Misuse

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Examples of a Description for this Objective

Too often, opioids are prescribed without knowing information that might indicate that the person who will take the opioids is at high risk of misuse or that they may be getting multiple prescriptions from different doctors. The CDC established prescribing guidelines, but they are often not followed.

 

Examples of a From-To Gap

Current State		Desired State
Many doctors do not make it a practice of screening for risk factors before prescribing opioids because it is inconvenient and not part of their normal workflow.		Providers are able to use a tablet-based tool to have patients do a risk factor screening in the waiting room, and that information is quickly made available to the doctor in an easy-to-use report so that the doctors can consider the risk factors when deciding how to manage pain.
Clinics don't encourage doctors to do risk factor screening because it takes too much time away from other billable work.		An efficient technology-enabled approach allows the doctors to get the valuable risk analysis without taking much of their time, and the clinics are typically able to increase their revenue by billing for the risk assessment.
Doctors too often prescribe opioids for people who are also on benzos without doing a screening first.		By systematically screening for both risk factors and other prescriptions, the risks of people taking both benzos and opioids is reduced.
Many dentists or oral surgeons, as standard practice, prescribe opioids after removing wisdom teeth or doing other oral surgery without any screening.		Anyone doing oral surgery who may prescribe opioids does a simple screen of risk factors may identify people who have a high risk of misuse and addiction. Based on this screening, they may avoid ANY prescription of opioids to people at higher risk.
A very small percent of medical professional prescribing opioids for chronic pain management follow most of the recommended best practices (use contract, tapering, pill counts, PDMP checks, etc.) Those processes take too much time and the medical professionals may not have the expertise in doing them well.		By launching the GuideMed program, a health system can make sure that the best practices for prescribing opioids are being carefully followed, reducing the risk to patients and reducing the amount of opioids in a community. And CMS and insurance reimbursements make this financially profitable for healthcare providers in most situations.

 

Examples of Current Activities