The Institute of Healthcare Improvement in with support from Pacira Pharmaceuticals will develop a tool to promote safer opioid prescribing for acute pain.
To create the tool, IHI will convene a multidisciplinary team of experts, including patient safety leaders, clinical leaders and anesthesiologists. The experts will develop an acute pain safety assessment and an intervention tool to reduce adverse events related to the over-use of opioids.
"Pain management and related opioid safety issues have become a critical threat to public health. While a number of public and private agencies are committed to advancing safe opioid management practices and have developed resources accordingly, much of this work has focused on the management of chronic pain," said Tejal K. Gandhi, MD, IHI's chief clinical and safety officer. "The goal of this project is to provide safety and clinical leaders with guidelines about the best processes to safely manage acute pain."
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