COVER STORY
Battling the Opioid Crisis Responsibilities of ASCs BY ROBERT KURTZ
T
he opioid crisis presents both a challenge and an opportunity for
ASCs, says Amy Mowles, president and chief executive officer of Edgewa- ter, Maryland-based Mowles Medical Practice Management, an ASC regula- tory and development company. “As health care providers, it is incumbent upon ASCs to play a role in helping reduce opioid use,” she says. “ASCs can also play a role in provid- ing treatments for pain that do not require opioids. This can contribute to growth in volume and allow ASCs to better serve their patient populations.” John Broadnax, MD, a pain man- agement specialist and co-founder and co-owner of Advanced Pain Institute of Texas in Lewisville, Texas, acknowl- edges that properly addressing the cri- sis will not come easy. “It is a very complex issue. Solutions to it will be relatively complex as well.”
That is true, in part, because the opioid problem has been brewing for quite some time, says pain manage- ment specialist Scott Glaser, MD, co- founder and president of Pain Special- ists of Greater Chicago, with locations throughout Illinois. “The interventional pain manage- ment community has long stated that people are receiving too many opi- oids,” Glaser says. “Fifteen years ago, pain was not being treated well enough and there was too much under-prescrib- ing. Now the pendulum has swung the other way and there is too much over- prescribing. Caught in the middle are physicians and patients who have taken a safe, compliant approach for years.” While the opioid crisis has gained significant attention as a major epidemic in the country, it has overshadowed another epidemic, says Eric Anderson, MD, a pain management specialist and
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co-founder and co-owner of Advanced Pain Institute of Texas. “Chronic pain is prevalent in our country. It is impera- tive that we do not overlook the needs of patients with such pain as we work to tackle opioid challenges.”
Protection Through Proactivity There are simple but effective steps ASCs can take to help ensure they do not con- tribute further to the crisis while making a positive impact, Broadnax says. “ASCs and their physicians must remain vigilant when prescribing med- ications
post-operatively,” he says.
“They can do so through the estab- lishment of protocols. Such protocols would call for the use of the state’s pre- scription monitoring database to deter- mine whether patients are on chronic opioids at that time and who is pre- scribing them. Whoever performs the preoperative management should con- tact the prescribing physicians to make sure there is no oversubscribing or double prescribing opioids for postop- erative pain.”
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