Thursday, November 21, 2024
11/21/2024
At Atrium Health we embrace the challenge of reducing pain, alleviating suffering, and improving functional outcomes for our patients, while reducing risks associated with opioid analgesia and improving outcomes for patients suffering opioid use disorder (OUD). We propose to use a quality improvement approach to enhance pain management through opioid sparing multimodal analgesia and improve OUD care through initiation of medications for OUD and harm reduction. This project, entitled Atrium Health Emergency Medicine Service Line Pain and Addiction Care Improvement, will focus on patients presenting to any of 25 Atrium Health emergency departments (EDs) located in North Carolina with complaints of pain or OUD. The populations served by Atrium Health in our initial target regions are the first and third most populous in North Carolina. In addition to the relatively large numbers of patients presenting to our EDs with pain conditions, there is a high prevalence of OUD and overdoses in the catchment area. We predict 600,780 unique patients/year will present to a participating ED with a pain complaint and 6,217 patients/year will present with OUD for totals of 1,802,340 patients with pain and 18,651 patients with OUD during the 3-year project. Prescribing opioids for the management of pain generates risk for our patient population to develop both opioid dependence and OUD. Previous analyses of care delivered to the target population have demonstrated much room for improvement across our service line. We need 1) effective multimodal pain management that improves pain outcomes, connects patients to effective outpatient pain care, and reduces the risks of opioid dependence and OUD; and 2) to provide more effective care to patients who present with OUD, including providing harm reduction, medications for OUD, and connection to ongoing community-based treatment. This project has been designed to address those needs. Our goals are to: 1) improve management of acute and chronic pain among patients presenting to Atrium Health EDs while reducing the harms of opioids, and 2) improve care for patients with OUD who present to Atrium Health EDs. We will achieve these goals through the following objectives: • By month 4, an emergency medicine (EM) pain and addiction task force will be established to oversee development and implementation of strategies to achieve Goal 1. • Improve knowledge of patient centered, trauma informed, opioid sparing pain management among EM providers and nurses as measured by adherence to the protocols and best practices implemented. • By month 6, implement policies and guidelines on treatment of OUD using harm reduction, trauma informed care, medications for OUD, and strong connections to community resources for ongoing treatment.
HHS’ Tracking Accountability in Government Grants System (TAGGS) website provides access to detailed descriptions of grants, loans, aggregated direct payments and other types of financial assistance awarded by the HHS Operating Divisions (OPDIVs) and the Office of the Secretary Staff Divisions (STAFFDIVs).
