Newark Hospital Cuts ED Opioid Prescriptions By 70 Percent

NEWARK, NJ — A Newark hospital has cut its emergency department opioid prescriptions for discharged patients by nearly 70 percent since 2016 through a program dubbed “STOMP,” administrators say.

University Hospital announced its opioid-related milestone last month, touting the success of its Stewardship to Transform OUD while Medicating for Pain program (STOMP).

As part of their quest to prevent and treat opioid use disorder (OUD), the hospital is using non-opioid medication whenever it’s a viable option. The policy hasn’t affected patients’ pain management satisfaction scores or return rates for additional care, University Hospital administrators said.

“The best way to prevent opioid addiction is to not expose someone to a situation where addiction can develop,” said Lewis Nelson, chair of the hospital’s department of emergency medicine.

In the instances where an opioid medication is absolutely necessary – usually in cases of serious acute pain – the hospital works with patients to keep the dose and duration as limited as possible, Nelson said.

Some other ways the STOMP program works include:

• Adopting emergency department guidelines that reduce the reliance on opioid use through the use of non-opioid therapies
• Implementing a strict hospital-wide stewardship program that emphasizes the use of non-opioid alternatives
• Reducing default opioid prescription pill counts
• Distributing naloxone in the emergency department to patients and educating them on its use
• Initiating buprenorphine (Suboxone) treatment in the emergency department and throughout the institution, to prevent and treat opioid withdrawal
• Adopting a “warm handoff process” to link patients suffering from addiction with immediate counseling and treatment
• Introducing peer navigators in the emergency department

“The cornerstone of long-term success in treating opioid addiction is medication maintenance,” said Petros Levounis, chair of the department of psychiatry. “We are lucky that after years of research we have found safe and effective medications, such as buprenorphine, to treat this devastating illness. It’s simply a shame not to use them.”

“This being said, addiction treatment is a 360-degree process that also includes psychotherapy, counseling, mutual help, and peer guidance to help people with the multiple psychosocial problems associated with substance use,” Levounis pointed out.

CEO and President Shereef Elnahal said that as a Medicaid Center of Excellence for opioid treatment in New Jersey, University Hospital takes its duty to reduce opioid abuse in the state seriously.

“I’m proud to share the work that care teams have done here in curbing the reliance on prescribing opioids for pain management treatment,” Elnahal said.

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