11.20.2017

Lending Bay State Expertise to the Lone Star State

How do you change the ways hospitals prescribe opioids in an effort to ensure that they are both assisting patients while not contributing to the opioid crisis?  Massachusetts hospitals have helped answer that question with a series of well-thought-out and comprehensive prescribing guidelines that a special MHA Task Force created and that hospitals across the state have agreed to adopt.

The work of MHA’s Substance Use Disorder Prevention and Treatment Task Force is detailed at this webpage on Patient CareLink. That work has garnered national attention, and last week MHA’s V.P. of Clinical Affairs Pat Noga, R.N., FAAN, and V.P. of Clinical Integration Steven Defossez, M.D. were invited by the Texas Hospital Association (THA) to attend a work session as THA began to draft its own guidelines.

After a presentation detailing the long process MHA undertook to draft and get consensus on the guidelines, Noga and Defossez participated in worktable sessions with Texas hospital personnel to help draft guidance language.