Ascension’s St. Vincent’s HealthCare in Jacksonville, Florida, is expanding a successful pilot program that dramatically reduced opioid use by joint replacement patients and actually improved their pain scores. The pilot was led by Gavan Duffy, MD, orthopedic surgeon and Chief of Orthopedics at St. Vincent’s Southside.
“Among the 275 joint replacement patients involved in the pilot, we reduced opioid usage by 76 percent while simultaneously lowering their pain scores,” said Dr. Duffy, who is also medical director of the St. Vincent’s Orthopedic Center of Excellence at St. Vincent’s Southside. “Our team approach to care and the dedication of everyone on our staff played a significant role in helping us achieve these amazing results.”
The orthopedic pilot program was based in part on a pain management initiative from the Ascension Pain Management Team.
“Opioid dependency and resultant drug overdose is nothing short of a nationwide epidemic,” said Tom VanOsdol, Senior Vice President, Ascension Healthcare, and Ministry Market Executive, Ascension Jacksonville. “A recent report from Florida’s medical examiner shows the number of opioid-related deaths grew by 35 percent from 2015 to 2016. In Jacksonville, first responders are caring for an average of one overdose call every two hours. As we deal with this public health crisis, it is crucial that we address pain management and work together to prevent opioid dependence in the first place.”
This program and leadership represents great work led by St. Vincent’s HealthCare as a pilot, and a part of Ascension’s System-wide effort to standardize pain management and decrease opioid use, which we’re in the process of spreading across the organization,” said Ziad Haydar, MD, MBA, Senior Vice President and Chief Clinical Officer, Ascension Healthcare, a division of Ascension.
St. Vincent’s also has reduced its use of the most potent injectable opioids by approximately 65 percent by providing educational tools focusing on use of non-opioid alternatives for various acute and chronic pain syndromes, as well as updating standard order sets used to expedite the ordering process for several surgical procedures to contain lower doses of opioids and allow the physician to increase the dose based on individual patient needs.
In addition, the health system partnered with the City of Jacksonville, Gateway Community Services and River Region Human Services to offer an opioid pilot program that identifies individuals as they overdose and engages them with recovery peer specialists to guide them through treatment and rehabilitation. The six-month program, now in its fourth month, began at St. Vincent’s Riverside and is being expanded to St. Vincent’s Southside and St. Vincent’s Clay County. To date, this program has achieved a 100 percent survival rate for the nearly 45 individuals involved.
