Geisinger population health initiative reduces hospital opioid use by 18%

Geisinger Health System’s ProvenRecovery program, a population health initiative to combat opioid use after surgery, reduced the length hospital stays, saved $1.5 million, and contributed to an 18% reduction in opioid use across the organization since its pilot launched in June 2017, Geisinger announced last month.

ProvenRecovery is a “surgical redesign” program aimed at pain management and reducing opioid administration to surgical patients by using three key measures to improve patient health before, during, and after surgery. The three measures are:

• Proper nutrition, including a pre-surgery kit with care and mobility instructions, along with immunonutrition drinks to account for nutrition gaps in a typical American diet
• Appropriate pain management during surgery using a technique called “multi-modal pain management,” which targets pain control for the surgical area and uses non-opioid medications
• Mobility post-surgery, where patients are encouraged and assisted in early mobility after surgery to help speed up the recovery process

During the pilot period, hospital stays for neurosurgery and colorectal surgery patients were cut in half, and the earlier discharges accounted for an average savings of $4,556 per case for colorectal surgery patients, Geisinger reports.

Given the results of the pilot initiative, Geisinger plans to implement the program across 42 surgical procedures, which impact approximately 15,000 surgeries every year. Geisinger hopes to expand the program to 100 surgical procedures by the end of 2019.

Geisinger Health System includes 13 hospital campuses and serves more than 1.5 million patients in Pennsylvania and New Jersey. The ProvenRecovery program builds on the organization’s genomic MyCode Community Health Initiative research and its Fresh Food Farmacy program, launched to address food insecurity and diabetes.