As a both a practicing emergency medicine physician, and Chief Medical Officer at AffirmHealth, an organization dedicated to combatting opioid abuse in this country, I spend a significant amount of time thinking about the right tools we need to develop to make pain management practices more effective. In the clinic, healthcare providers are operating at a time when we have never had more information about our patients readily available. Conversely, however, this wealth of information often creates the challenge of “too much noise; too little signal” and it can be easier to fall into the trap of simply maintaining old practice patterns that have worked for us in the past. Unfortunately, the outdated practices of yesterday will not be enough to effectively reverse the worsening opioid epidemic in our country.
Comments