Jason Tuckerman
Cleveland VA Medical Center, USA
Biography
The Cleveland VA Medical Center has been at the forefront of responsible opioid prescribing for more than a decade. This facility currently ranks #1 amongst all VA Medical Centers in the United States for having the lowest percentage of its Veteran patients on opioids. This success has been recognized at the highest levels of government, as evidenced by a site visit by the President’s Opioid Commission in September 2017. We studied opioid prescribing practices at the Cleveland VA Medical center during the height of the opioid epidemic to help understand best practices. We also compared data on opioid prescribing at the Cleveland VA to rates of opioid prescribing in the Greater Cleveland area. We found that, in addition to being a leader within the VA, our facility has outpaced gains made in the non-VA healthcare sector as well. We will demonstrate how these studies were conducted so that other large healthcare organizations can assess their own opioid prescribing practices in relation to external standards.