Launched by the Colorado Hospital Association, it is billed as the first of its kind in the nation to include this number of hospitals in the effort.
The goal was for the group of hospitals to reduce opioids by 15 percent. Instead, Dr. Don Stader, an ER physician at Swedish who helped develop and lead the study, said the hospitals did much better: down 36 percent on average.
“It’s really a revolution in how we approach patients and approach pain, and I think it’s a revolution in pain management that’s going to help us end the opioid epidemic,” Stader says.
The decrease amounted to 35,000 fewer opioid doses than during the same period in 2016.
The method calls for coordination across providers, pharmacies, clinical staff, and administrators. It introduces new procedures, for example, like using non-opioid patches for pain. Another innovation, Stader said, is using ultrasound to “look into the body” and help guide targeted injections of non-opioid pain medicines.
Rather than opioids like oxycodone, hydrocodone, or fentanyl, Stader said, doctors used safer and less addictive alternatives, like ketamine and lidocaine, an anesthetic commonly used by dentists.
“They say ‘only narcotics work for me, only narcotics work for me.’ Because they haven’t had the experience of that multifaceted care, they don’t expect that ibuprofen is going to work or that ibuprofen plus Tylenol, plus a heating pad, plus stretching measures, they don’t expect that to work,” she said.
The program requires a big culture change, encouraging staff to change the conversation from pain medication alone to ways to “treat your pain to help you cope with your pain to help you understand your pain,” Duncan said.
Emergency medical staff are all too familiar with the ravages of the opioid epidemic.
They see patients struggling with the consequences every day. But Bakes, the ER doctor at Swedish, said this project has changed minds and allowed health care professionals to help combat the opioid crisis they unwittingly helped to create.
“And I think if we did put this in practice in Colorado and showed our success that this would spread like wildfire across the country,” Stader said.
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