Podcast covers deployment of opioid stewardship

The American Hospital Association (AHA) released part four of its five-part series on opioid stewardship. This episode features Marie Cleary-Fishman, AHA’s vice president of clinical quality, and Holly Geyer, M.D., hospital internal medicine practitioner subspecialized in addiction medicine at the Rochester, Minn.-based Mayo Clinic. They discuss how to encourage careful and selective use of long-term opioid therapy in the context of managing chronic pain through evidence-based prescribing guidelines. Other topics covered are how to educate staff and patients, and how to improve the referral-to-treatment process. Hospitals are trying to limit the amount of opioids leaving their doors while increasing education about opioid use and misuse among health care workers and patients and deploying new treatment models.