Substance misuse remains a major public health concern that has not only been veiled by the pandemic but augmented by soaring opioid-related mortality and morbidity. According to a Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s National Center for Health Statistics press release, there was an estimated 100,306 drug overdose deaths in the United States during the 12-month period ending April 2021, an increase of 28.5 percent from the 78,056 deaths during the same period the year before.
WSHA seeks your partnership in mitigating and reducing risks associated with opioid misuse by implementing acute opioid best practices in your hospital. Health care professionals are invited to attend the supportive and educational webinar, Opioid Stewardship: Leveraging Opioid Prescribing Data to Drive Change in Your Hospital Community, at 11 a.m. – 12 p.m. on March 30, 2022. The webinar will review the Better Prescribing, Better Treatment Program, a clinician-driven quality improvement program that supports appropriate opioid prescribing, along with a virtual tutorial on how to best leverage the WSHA Data Analytic Service Hub (DASH) to review acute prescribing performance in your community.
Register in advance for this meeting here. If you have any questions or would like to connect to discuss Acute Prescribing and/or Opioid Stewardship, please reach out to WSHA Senior Director Safety & Quality Tina Seery at tinas@wsha.org.
Below are additional resources related to the U.S. Opioid Crisis for your review:
- CDC: Drug Overdose Deaths in the U.S. Top 100,000 Annually
- Harvard School of Public Health: What led to the opioid crisis—and how to fix it | News | Harvard T.H. Chan School of Public Health
- The Lancet: Responding to the opioid crisis in North America and beyond: recommendations of the Stanford–Lancet Commission – The Lancet
