Quality/Patient Safety Goal:
Opioid Prescription Reduction in Orthopedic Surgical Patients
Goal & Summary
We are committed to eliminating any events of serious harm at Akron Children’s.
Why is this important?
The worsening opioid epidemic is concerning, even for children's hospitals. We are reducing the number of outpatient and inpatient opioid prescriptions.
What are we doing to improve?
We developed a quality improvement team that established evidence-based care guidelines for specific types of orthopedic surgeries. We subsequently used the electronic health record to facilitate the implementation of postoperative guidelines when ordering pain medications. The group measured compliance with the guidelines and the overall prescription of opioids (morphine milligram equivalents = MME).
What we are doing to improve, fig. 1
Decreasing MED for discharged patients in orthopedics.
What we are doing to improve, fig. 2
Decreasing MED for patients discharged from surgery.
