A Quality Improvement Project to Investigate Individual Provider Variation in Opioid Prescribing From the Emergency Department

Opioid misuse is a known public safety threat and public health problem, both nationwide and
in the Commonwealth of Massachusetts. As a part of these efforts, Emergency Department (ED)
outpatient prescriptions have been identified as a potential area for improvement. The
Massachusetts Hospital Association (MHA), in conjunction with other stakeholders, developed
a set of recommendations to address opioid management and prescribing within the ED setting.

This study is timed to coincide with the rollout by UMassMemorial Health Care of a
system-wide opioid prescribing practice guideline/policy which mirrors the Massachusetts
Hospital Association's guideline. This rollout provides a unique opportunity for a natural
experiment related to provider prescribing practices.

This is a quality improvement project with two primary objectives:

- Improve understanding of physician practice patterns related to emergency department
(ED) opioid prescribing

- Evaluate the effectiveness of providing individual clinician profile data in
influencing behavior change among ED providers, as it relates to their opioid
prescribing patterns

There are two corresponding specific aims:

- Quantitatively describe the current state of opioid prescribing by ED clinicians at
four UMass Memorial EDs (using prescriptions generated within the ED electronic health
information system between February 2014 and the study implementation date).
Descriptive statistics being considered for feasibility of study include:

- Number of opioid prescriptions per hundred patients seen

- Percentage of total prescriptions written that are opioids

- Mean or median quantity of pills dispensed per opioid prescription

- Number of prescriptions for long-acting opioid formulations

- Evaluate the effect on prescribing practices of providing individual clinicians with
their profile data to illustrate their personal opioid prescribing patterns, relative
to the de-identified distribution for all other clinicians in the ED group

This project is timed to coincide with the separately planned implementation of a
system-wide opioid prescribing guideline. The guideline implementation is an independent
event, but we feel that it presents a unique opportunity for a simultaneous experimental
intervention to assess whether providing clinicians with their individual data alters their
prescribing practices beyond any effect achieved simply by being subject to the new
guideline. Data collected from the electronic medical record and clinician self-reported
data about their perceptions of their prescribing practices will be used to evaluate both
the effect of the guideline implementation (i.e. comparison of prescribing patterns for all
clinicians before and after guideline implementation) and the combined effect of guideline
implementation plus individual profile intervention (i.e. comparisons across intervention
versus control groups).

Inclusion Criteria:

- Provider who practices Emergency Medicine in one or more of four UMass-affiliated EDs
(UMassMemorial Medical Center, Marlborough Hospital, and Clinton Hospital), including
attending physicians, resident physicians, and advanced practice providers (PAs and
NPs).

- Have placed at least one electronic prescription for a medication of interest (namely
opioids) in the PulseCheck electronic medical record system during the 12 months
prior to the implementation of the opioid guidelines

- Be actively practicing in a UMass-affiliated ED at time of implementation of the
guidelines

Exclusion Criteria: