Marietta, Ga.-based WellStar Health System and Pacira Pharmaceuticals entered into a joint agreement to reduce opioid use and dependence following surgery.
The organizations' new opioid minimization strategy focuses on educating clinicians and administrators about the negative impact of postsurgical opioids. It will also focus on developing enhanced recovery protocols to reduce opioid use and standardize the rollout of the protocols across the 11 hospitals that are a part of WellStar Health System.
Together, WellStar and Pacira will develop procedure-specific pain management protocols. These will be centered on the use of non-opioid medications. Additionally, the organizations will develop a suite of opioid education materials for clinicians as well as quality improvement data that tracks the implementation of the protocols. The data will be used to create a guide of best practices and case studies, to be used in the transfer of protocols from one hospital to an entire health system.