The Need

The opioid epidemic is widely known to be a major problem in our community and around the country. While there are many critically important overdose prevention approaches for those already experiencing addiction, reducing the possibility of addiction before it can begin is an area that needs more attention. The CDC recognizes reducing exposure to prescription opioids, where appropriate, as a crucial part of prevention in the opioid epidemic. Prescription opioids are often used to treat moderate-to-severe pain following surgery or injury as well as pain related to chronic health conditions such as back pain and osteoarthritis. Orthopedic surgeons are the third highest prescribers of opioids among all physicians in the United States. As such, finding an alternative pain management protocol for surgery is of high importance.

There is also a great need to reduce the number of opioid prescriptions across the healthcare system. According to the National Center for Drug Abuse Statistics (NCDAS), 4 out of every 5 pharmacy-filled prescriptions are opioids.

What is OCRI doing to combat the Opioid Crisis?

OCRI’s Opioid Reduction Initiative focuses on educating patients and healthcare professionals about our research-backed opioid alternatives that can be used during and after surgery instead of traditional narcotics.

Our findings show a patient’s pain can be well controlled after surgery without taking opioid medication. On top of that, patients reported less complications and side effects than they did in the opioid containing group in the study.

Because of this research, patients can feel confident in an alternative to opioids, and potentially to not just consume less opioids, but none at all during and after surgery.

“That really hadn’t been done before our study,” Dr. Todd Irwin explains, “This work has spurred on other hospital systems and physicians to do similar studies as well.”

So, what’s next?

OCRI has designed opioidreduction.com to be an opioid use prevention and educational tool with the main goal of reducing the use of opioids, where appropriate, across the healthcare system.

Our aims for going forward are to:

  • Expand Access: Scale use of opioid free surgery from study participation to everyday practice
  • Empower Patients: Educate patients about their pain management options by providing resources. By disseminating our findings our goal is to equip patients to have conversations with their doctors about their care preferences.
  • Change Practices: Reduce opioid prescriptions by educating physicians worldwide of our novel opioid free surgical option. We will do this by growing OCRI’s outreach team with public health professionals

To reduce rates of addiction and deaths attributed to the opioid epidemic, there must be a dramatic shift within the healthcare community to reduce the number of opioid prescriptions written every day.

Join us as we combat the opioid epidemic. CLICK HERE to support this initiative.

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