Looking at the website for Troy Medical Center, it is a 97-bed hospital servicing a six-county area in Southern Alabama. According to this https://www.rasmussen.edu/degrees/health-sciences/blog/types-of-hospitals/ a hospital with < 100 beds is classified as a “small hospital” This appears that this system encourages nursing staff to “just say no” when pts request an opioid dose, which there are prescriber’s orders for a particular pt. Does this term “improves nurse practices” means that they lowered the number of “nursing hours per pt” ? I did a word search on this article and the word PAIN did not appear ONCE in the entire text but in the text… Reducing excess.. prolonging lengths of stay and increasing the risk of readmission Is this another reference to the bottom line of the hospital ?
https://www.troymedicalcenter.com/about/
Significant Reduction In Inpatient Opioid Use Achieved With Careeffectstm Stewardship Service
(MENAFN– PR Newswire) Indicator Sciences Highlights 20% Inpatient Opioid Reduction at Troy Regional Medical Center
BIRMINGHAM, Ala.
, June 13, 2023 /PRNewswire/ –Indicator Sciences, the provider of the CareEffects Stewardship consultative analytics service, today proudly unveils the results of a successful initiative at Troy Regional Medical Center. Implementation of the service has led to a 20% reduction in inpatient opioid use within just six months, underscoring its value and effectiveness.
CareEffects reduces inpatient opioid use by 20%, improves nurse practices & elevates patient care at Troy Medical Center
Opioids pose a challenge for hospitals in that inpatient administration can cause complications and influence outpatient utilization.
Reducing excess
opioid utilization is critical to prevent opioid-related adverse drug events, complications which occur in nearly 10% of inpatient admissions in U.S. hospitals, prolonging lengths of stay and increasing the risk of readmission.
Leveraging comprehensive context-of-care risk-adjustment analytics, CareEffects Stewardship identifies individual nurses whose practice patterns lead to increased opioid utilization compared with their peers. As nurses manage roughly 80% of inpatient opioids on a PRN (as needed) basis, there is an urgent need for closer monitoring of individual nursing practices. This pioneering approach paves the way for focused stewardship education, fostering improved patient outcomes.
Rick Smith, CEO of Troy Regional Medical Center, praises the program: “As leaders of a small hospital, we have a zero-tolerance policy towards preventable complications. CareEffects Stewardship has become an integral part of our pursuit of delivering the highest quality of patient care.”
Led by Chief Clinical Officer Amy Minor, RN, a targeted nursing intervention was conducted, focusing on approximately 5% of the inpatient nursing staff. These nurses each exhibited a significant increase in opioid use per shift compared with their peers, after risk-adjusting for context-of-care.
Minor points to a success story: “One of our nurses, initially identified as an outlier, has since evolved into a practice leader. Our non-punitive approach has not just enhanced patient safety, but also nurtured a supportive and learning-centric environment for our nursing staff.”
Filed under: General Problems
PROOF,, torture in the healthcare setting is alive and well in America,,,sicko’s….mw
If they spend half of the money and time they use to reduce / discontinue proper use of opioids for legitimate pain patients, they could have the real culprit, illegal fentanyl figured out by now!
On another note, I read an interesting article on Wired’s website regarding “care effect”. It basically explains how patients need less treatment, as in surgery or medication, and more empathy and a warm bedside manner from providers because they claim to have found that it reduces the need for things like pain medications. I believe the article came out in 2013. No surprise someone sought to capitalize on the idea in this atmosphere, since it seems that it may fit here given the name they’ve hung on this particular program.
I was also wondering the exact same thing! Couldn’t the hospital be liable for their failure to treat the patients often unrelenting pain, especially after surgeries? I hope the patients were not only informed, but consented to being part of this “nurse intervention.” I have to wonder if there were incentives for these nurses to lower the amount of opioids they provided to their patients. I also feel like this article could have been used to make their actions appear justifiable by providing documentation that this was done as a “nurse intervention” rather than a “patient opioid reduction study” that the patients had no idea they were participating in. I know I am speculating but this world is getting kind of crazy!
This sounds a lot like it’s centered on retraining nurses rather than on actual care for the patients. Of course they’re going to see a reduction in patient use of opioids if they “just say no” when a patient asks for pain medication. That’s just asinine. And to boast to the media that it works! For whom, we might ask? For the hospital’s optics? For the nurse’s re-education on how to deny patients adequate pain relief? If there is a doctor ordering medication, and the nurses are saying no when asked for it, isn’t that a breach of Standard of Care? Because it certainly appears to be all of the above. I guess in this world, this was bound to happen when they’re continually being patted on the back for soft (yet ever hardening) prohibition every which way we look.
Did they bother to determine if inpatient pain was effectively controlled? Admittedly I’m reading between the lines to conclude the hospital administration bullied those 5% outlier nurses until they were too scared to give properly prescribed opioids when needed. Unconscionable….