Does Your Practice Have Effective Opioid Prescribing Protocols?

Although guidelines and regulations will ultimately limit the number of future addicts and are pivotal to stemming the crisis, the dynamic and constantly changing nature of regulations makes prescriber compliance difficult. For this reason, it is crucial for any healthcare organization to introduce prescribing protocols. Protocols provide consistency for opioid prescribing clinicians and help support responsible prescribing. Moreover, they instill confidence and transparency in how a practice prescribes at every level.

Prescribing protocols: best practices

• Consistent with guidelines, regulations, and requirements
  • The first step is ensuring that all state opioid prescribing guidelines and regulations are followed for the state(s) your organziation is located.
  • Outline policies for each insurance payer your practice accepts. This allows clincians to match and follow the requirements for each patient and their respective insurance.
• Risk-informed
  • Assess each patient's risk level and provide supporting documentation -- insurance companies often oppose blanket standing orders, and risk-informed documentation helps to avoid this.
• Highlight organization's values
  • Align protocols with your practice's mission and values.
  • Make protocol adherence a top priority throughout your organization.

Walk the walk

Your organization has developed and implemented prescribing protocols...now what?

It's time to execute. The protocols must become ingrained throughout the practice. To ensure protocols are more than a document circulated once and forgotten, they need to become part of the clincian's workflow. During the initial roll-out and after, it is important to monitor and measure performance. It is also critical to listen -- ask for feedback and recommendations and make improvements accordingly. 

For more, check out our recent posts on related topics:

• Opioid Prescribing in 2018: Protect Your Patients. Protect Your Practice.
• Pain in the Paperwork: Determine Risk and Document Medical Necessity
• A Platform to Facilitate Pain Management Compliance
• Opioid Prescribing Guidelines: A State-by-State Overview
• SAMHSA Medication Assisted Treatment Protocols Are Out: Here's What You Need to Know
• Are You Effectively Assessing Risk When Prescribing Opioids?

 

How AffirmHealth Shield can help

At AffirmHealth, we build software to better facilitate prescriber compliance. Our new product, Shield, helps organizations develop, implement and manage prescribing protocols. If responsible prescribing is important to you and your organization, having protocols in place is a must. 

Subscribe to our blog, so you can stay up-to-date on this topic: