The Power of Opioid Prevention and Treatment Series: Opioid Stewardship Program Construction 101

The opioid crisis has been around for decades and has progressively worsen during the pandemic. According to the CDC’s National Center for Health Statistics, there were more than 100,000 drug overdose deaths in the United States from April 2020 to April 2021, an increase of 28.5% during the same time period the year before. Yet only 23% hospitals have an opioid stewardship program, according to the American Journal of Health-System Pharmacy, In this episode – part three of AHA’s five-part series on opioid stewardship, Marie Cleary-Fishman, vice president of clinical quality at the American Hospital Association, is joined by Dr. Holly Geyer, hospital internal medicine practitioner sub-specialized in addiction medicine at Mayo Clinic. The discussion: the roots of the opioid epidemic and the state and federal requirements - and institutional protocols – for developing solutions.