The CHIME Opioid Task Force was launched in early 2018 with a straight-forward mission: to turn the tide on the opioid epidemic using the knowledge and expertise of the nation’s healthcare IT leaders. While our mission is straight-forward, achieving it is a complicated challenge. Opioid addiction is a complex disease that requires long-term, if not lifetime, care from well-informed clinicians who are supported with easy-to-use and reliable tools. The CHIME Opioid Playbook has been created by CIOs and CMIOs for CIOs and CMIOs to help them develop a program that will help their providers, healthcare organizations and especially patients be successful.
The playbook provides a framework to build IT-based supports for launching and maintaining system-wide initiatives to reduce the disease of opioid addiction in our communities. It is based on the knowledge, experience, and insights from the diverse membership of CHIME and CHIME Foundation partners, with real-world examples, best practices and links to valuable resources. The playbook is tailored to CIOs and CMIOs who serve as members of their organization’s Opioid Stewardship Committee, but we expect that others will find it to be a useful guide to understanding technology’s role in creating a solution.
This playbook is a living document. It is designed to offer up-to-date IT-based leading practices for addressing opioid addiction. For instance, portions of this iteration of the playbook focus on reducing prescriptions of opioids to patients being seen in the hospital setting. By exposing fewer patients to opioids, or lessening exposure for those who will benefit from treatment, is likely to lessen the number of patients to develop substance use disorder and remain in recovery. Later iterations may focus on the population of people who had become addicted and now need long-term care to help them remain addiction-free.
Many of today’s opioid success stories have a solid foundation of similar steps, which we compiled here. Each chapter is tailored to fit its specific purpose, but generally we describe the background for a specific component, provide real-world examples with keys to their success, offer guidelines for measuring success, key takeaways and links to resources. Yet every state, region and community are different and there is no one-size-fits-all solution. As you go through this process, we encourage you to identify the needs, strengths and opportunities within your own organizations and the communities you serve. You may find that certain steps work well for you while other steps need to be modified. You may discover an innovative solution that better fits your circumstances. We welcome hearing about your lessons learned and successes as you embark on this important work.
Thank you for joining us in our efforts to end the opioid crisis.
The CHIME Opioid Task Force
