University Hospitals scores $200,000 award to broaden implementation of new technology to combat opioid abuse

Credit: University Hospitals

As health systems grapple with the real-life effects of the opioid epidemic, some hospitals are getting a leg up in devising new technologies to fight it. Cleveland-based University Hospitals system has been awarded $200,000 from the Ohio Opioid Technology Challenge for a new technology solution that will help health professionals fight opioid abuse.

The award from the Ohio Opioid Technology Challenge will allow the expansion of UH Care Continues, a discharge-planning process tool that can identify patients at-risk for opioid misuse and dependence through opioid surveillance and tracking in real time, pinpoint patients receiving an opioid prescription prior to hospital discharge and assess their risk factors for addiction.

The UH Care Continues tool uses a logistics technology platform to support patients in transitioning out of the hospital. For patients who have been prescribed an opioid, the system will use algorithms to prompt the care coordination team to look at the patient's pain-related needs and possible risk for addiction or opioid-use disorder. The system will confirm appropriateness with the prescriber and can also enable moving the patient toward alternative, non-pharmacologic pain treatment options such as acupuncture or massage therapy. The tool will enable automated referrals to related services, community resources and for follow-up care.

UH Care Continues has been implemented at UH Geauga and UH Cleveland medical centers with plans to roll it out across the system's remaining community hospitals. 

University Hospitals includes 18 hospitals, more than 50 outpatient health centers and 200 physician offices in 16 counties throughout northern Ohio as well as University Hospitals Rainbow Babies & Children's Hospital, University Hospitals MacDonald Women's Hospital, University Hospitals Seidman Cancer Center.

"Given the current opioid crisis plaguing our state and the nation, UH is taking an aggressive approach to patient safety around pain management and the appropriate use of opioids as well as other controlled substances," said Eric Beck, MD, an emergency medicine physician and president of UH Ventures, the business innovation arm of the UH system, which designed the tech-enabled care transition system. "This new platform provides us with a unique opportunity to limit, by ensuring necessity, many of the opioid prescriptions contributing to risk for opioid misuse and dependence."

Numerous other provides are taking their own steps to combat opioid abuse, including new prescribing policies and protocols. As of January, Nebraska became the first state to require that all drugs be reported to its Prescription Drug Monitoring Program, or PDMP. 

To Nebraska's south, New Orleans' Oschner Health System made opioid monitoring a function its EHR, Epic. In Indiana, as of 2017 the state said it would integrate EHR software with its Inspect program to better track controlled substance prescribing.

Finally, University of Carolina Health Care at Chapel Hill announced plans to integrate its Epic EHR with the states controlled substance reporting platform, a move that allows clinicians to access the database when they order medicine, simplifying a once-complicated process that required juggling the two systems simultaneously, into one that takes just a few steps for a provider to confirm a patient's prescription history. This helps make sure a patient is not prescribed any inappropriate medication.

Twitter: @BethJSanborn
Email the writer: beth.sanborn@himssmedia.com