Six Building Blocks Workshop: Implementing Team-Based Management of Chronic Opioid Therapy

Sunday, March 4, 8am – 12pm

The cost for Building Blocks is $100. Preregistration is required.

Join APS at a brand new session for primary care, medical, and behavioral specialists as speakers outline the concrete steps necessary to implement an effective, interdisciplinary office-based pain management practice utilizing evidence-based treatment. The session will take place March 4, 2018, one day before the start of the Scientific Summit at the Disneyland Hotel® in Anaheim, CA.

In 2014, more than 240 million prescriptions were written for prescription opioids, more than enough to give every American adult their own bottle of pills. The challenge of responding to prescription opioid overuse within the United States has fallen disproportionately on those in primary care clinic settings.

The goal of this workshop is to provide practicing primary care providers and other inter-professional specialists involved in the care of patients with chronic pain, information and guidance to support team-based, practice improvements in the management of chronic opioid therapy. This guidance is based on observation of common practice-based changes made by 20 exemplar primary care clinics across the U.S. to improve management of chronic opioid therapy.

Our team has organized these changes into a set of six “building blocks”:

1. leadership support for change;
2. effective clinic policies, patient agreements(contracts) and workflows related to chronic opioid therapy;
3. an opioid tracking and monitoring system;
4. planned, patient-centered “pain” visits;
5. resources for complex patients with addiction, opioid use disorder, and/or mental/behavioral health issues; and
6. measurement of progress towards improved chronic opioid therapy management.

These building blocks can help practices implement the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC’s) March 2016 Guideline for Prescribing Opioids for Chronic Pain.

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Building Block presenters include:

David J. Tauben, MD

University of Washington Medical Center

Laura-Mae Baldwin, MD

University of Washington Department of Family Medicine

Jessica Merlin, MD PhD

University of Pittsburgh Department of Medicine

Mark Stephens

Healthcare Consultant

The workshop agenda will include:

1. Background on the scope of the opioid epidemic, its impact on primary care clinicians and practices, and implementation challenges of new prescribing and practice guidelines.
2. Presentation of the process of inquiry, development and the current version of the six ‘building blocks’ for guiding improvement in the management of chronic opioid therapy.
3. Small-group activity for workshop attendees to share, assess, compare and discuss their clinic’s performance following the six building blocks using a 26-item assessment tool.
4. All participant sharing of best practices and tools for addressing gaps identified in the six building blocks
5. Development and sharing of next step clinic specific and general “action plans” that workshop attendees can use to begin improving management of chronic opioid therapy when they return to their practices

Learning Objectives:

• Identify the six key components of a clinic process for improving management of chronic opioid therapy
• List fundamental features of clinic policies and patient agreements that support improvement in managing chronic opioid therapy
• Name the data elements important for measuring success in improving management of chronic opioid therapy
• Identify the next steps their clinic could take to improve management of chronic opioid therapy

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