Meditech added an opioid stewardship toolkit to Expanse, the company's web-based EHR.
The opioid stewardship toolkit includes clinical decision support tools, best practice workflows and educational materials that are aligned with the CDC's guidelines for prescribing opioids for chronic pain. Through the toolkit, clinicians can access state prescription drug monitoring programs from within their workflow and tools to track patients' compliance with opioid treatment plans, among other resources.
Meditech said the new toolkit will help providers identify patients at high risk for opioid abuse and support safer opioid prescribing practices overall.
"When prescribing opioids, you want to assess the risks for the patient from two perspectives," Upendra Thaker, MD, anesthesiologist and associate CMO at State College, Pa.-based Mount Nittany Medical Center, said in a news release. "One is the patient's possibility of developing addiction to the opioids being prescribed, and the other is the patient's risk of experiencing respiratory depression.
"The toolkit will help identify those patients so you can come to the right conclusions and be a safer prescriber," she added.