Increasing Implementation of Post-Operative Opioid Prescribing Guidelines

Summary

The objective of this research study is to evaluate the effect of a quality improvement initiative carried out by a health system opioid stewardship task force aiming to increase clinician post-operative prescribing adherence with procedure specific guidelines that were developed using patient reported data. The feedback compares the clinician's average number of opioid pills prescribed after a given procedure to other clinicians in the health system and to the health system guideline recommended amount based on patient reported data on opioid pills taken for that procedure. The feedback also provides historical data on mean patient reported number opioid pills taken following a given procedure and on patients' ability to manage pain among those who received guideline adherent prescriptions compared with patients who received greater than the guideline recommended amount.

Conditions

• Surgery
• Opioid Use
• Opioid Misuse
• Prescription Opioid Misuse

Interventions

OTHER

Opioid Prescribing Report Cards

Initial comparison: Clinicians will receive an initial peer comparison feedback report by email in which their post-operative opioid prescribing for patients undergoing their top 3 procedures is compared to the guideline recommended doses and the mean prescribing doses by other University of Pennsylvania Health System (UPHS) prescribers for each of those 3 procedures since the start of the baseline period. Furthermore, in an attached report, for each of the 3 procedures, the mean patient reported ability to manage pain one week at home after the procedure will be displayed for those who received guideline compliant dosages of opioids relative to those who received higher than guideline recommended amounts. Monthly comparison: On a monthly basis clinicians will get a report providing similar peer comparison feedback as above but with a monthly trend line of their performance since the start of the intervention.

Sponsors & Collaborators

• University of Pennsylvania

  lead OTHER

Principal Investigators

• M. Kit Delgado, MD, MS · University of Pennsylvania

• Anish Agarwal, MD, MPH · University of Pennsylvania

• Zarina Ali, MD · University of Pennsylvania

• Dan Lee, MD · University of Pennsylvania

Study Design

Allocation

RANDOMIZED

Purpose

HEALTH_SERVICES_RESEARCH

Masking

SINGLE

Model

PARALLEL

Eligibility

Sex

ALL

Healthy Volunteers

Yes

Timeline & Regulatory

Start

2022-06-01

Primary Completion

2023-05-05

Completion

2023-11-05

Countries

• United States

Study Locations