opioid crisis Archives
Reducing postoperative opioids
Feb. 24, 2020—An opioid-restrictive prescribing protocol reduced the number of postoperative opioid prescriptions and the oral morphine equivalent per prescription.
Tennessee Receives Grant from Federal Government to Address Opioid Crisis
Dec. 20, 2019—The Division of TennCare will partner with VUMC as part of the MOM program focusing on 26 rural and urban counties to improve the outcomes for women with opioid use disorder and their infants.
Multisite study focuses on opioid use during pregnancy
Dec. 5, 2019—The Vanderbilt Maternal Addiction Recovery Program is participating in a 12-site clinical trial that will compare two forms of the medication buprenorphine in treating opioid use disorder during pregnancy, and the results could have a potentially significant impact on clinical practice.
Project seeks to enhance opioid care for infants
Oct. 10, 2019—The number of opioid-exposed infants who were connected, along with their families, to outside resources upon discharge from the hospital surged in a recent six-month pilot.
New tool helps predict patients’ opioid needs after cesarean section
Aug. 29, 2019—Most women who undergo a cesarean section are sent home with more opioids than they need, but a significant proportion of women use all opioids and report unmet pain needs, according to Sarah Osmundson, MD, MS, assistant professor of Obstetrics and Gynecology.
Parental substance use linked to increase in infants in foster care
Jul. 15, 2019—The nation’s opioid crisis is a factor in the recent increase in the number of infants entering the nation’s foster care system, with at least half of all infant placements now a result of parental substance use.
New clinic bridges inpatient, outpatient addiction care
May. 2, 2019—New Bridge Clinic links patients with substance use disorder to follow-up care upon discharge.
VUMC Addiction Consultation Service sees rising demand
Dec. 13, 2018—An Addiction Consultation Service, specialized training for physicians and changes in the language used in addiction cases are the first of many in a series of new clinical approaches being offered around addiction care as Vanderbilt University Medical Center — and the rest of the country — see an increased demand for such services.
Early postpartum opioids linked with persistent usage
Dec. 13, 2018—Vanderbilt researchers have published findings indicating that regardless of whether a woman delivers a child by cesarean section or by vaginal birth, if they fill prescriptions for opioid pain medications early in the postpartum period, they are at increased risk of developing persistent opioid use.
QuizTime app created to aid opioid education efforts for providers
Sep. 13, 2018—Vanderbilt University Medical Center will partner with the Tennessee Department of Health to offer workplace-based education to health professionals across the state via QuizTime, a smartphone application developed at VUMC. This continuing education activity will focus on proper utilization of opioid and non-opioid therapies in managing pain.
Discovery Lecture to focus on nation’s opioid epidemic
Sep. 6, 2018—Innovative strategies for addressing the nation’s opioid epidemic and its consequences will be discussed during a Cutting-edge Discovery Lecture on Sept. 13. The lecture will begin at 4 p.m. in room 208 Light Hall.
Health policy speaker urges looking beyond data
Sep. 6, 2018—Katherine Swartz, PhD, a nationally known leader in health policy research, encouraged others conducting investigations in the field to move beyond the data and into local communities to gather the stories behind the data during last week’s Research into Policy and Practice Lecture hosted by Vanderbilt University Medical Center’s Department of Health Policy.
