Coalition launches opioid safety pilot programs

    On Jan. 25, a coalition of Colorado Hospital Association, the Colorado Consortium for Prescription Drug Abuse Prevention and the  Colorado Medical Society announced the launch of a new safety initiative — The Colorado Opioid Solution: Colorado Clinicians United to Resolve the Epidemic (CO’s CURE). This program seeks to create partnerships between Colorado’s hospitals and the state’s medical specialty societies to develop the nation’s first comprehensive, multispecialty medical guidelines for limiting opioid use and increasing the use of alternatives to opioids (ALTOs).
    The CO’s CURE initiative will provide the resources to convene medical specialty society organizations to develop and implement new evidence-based opioid prescribing guidelines to pilot in Colorado hospitals and medical practices. The specialty-derived guidelines will be built around four pillars that all specialties can adhere to — limit opioid use, use ALTOs for treatment of pain, implement harm reduction strategies, and improve treatment and referral of patients with opioid use disorder — while also allowing the specifics of each set of guidelines to be tailored to the nuances of each specialty.
    The first phase of CO’s CURE will be led by the Rocky Mountain chapter of the Society of Hospital Medicine, which represents the state’s hospitalists. Hospitalists provide care in the hospital for patients who are admitted. The organization is currently working the coalition to develop guidelines for hospitalists that can be piloted at a Colorado hospital later this year. This first phase will be funded by a State Opiate Response grant through the Colorado Office of Behavioral Health.

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