OPEN: Michigan’s Opioid Prescribing Engagement Network

We wanted to get real-world prescribing and real-world consumption data from beyond the ivory tower, from beyond just an academic medical center. To really understand what was happening in our communities as it related to surgical care, pain care, and opioids, and to create patient centered recommendations and evidence-based recommendations that are more than just expert opinion.

The Michigan OPEN—the Opioid Prescribing Engagement Network:

• Founded to develop a preventive approach to the opioid epidemic
• Focused on reducing acute care—surgery, dentistry, emergency medicine, trauma—prescribing
• Addressed opioid prescribing during the acute care period among those patients not using opioids
• Offered the greatest potential to reduce the number of new chronic opioid users and minimize unintended distribution of prescription opioids into communities
• Attempts to create safer communities for patients and their families
• Has multidisciplinary codirectors: an anesthesiologist pain physician; a plastic surgeon for hands who is a health services researcher; a transplant surgeon who directs medical education for a medical school
• Other team members: statisticians, other pain physicians, other types of surgeons, addictionologists, research assistants, implementation specialists, nurses, pharmacists