CTN-0084: Developing a Prescription Opioid Registry Across Diverse Health Systems

Cynthia Campbell, PhD
Lead Investigator
Kaiser Permanente
Cynthia.I.Campbell@kp.org

The opioid crisis continues its highly negative impact, with over 49,000 opioid related overdose deaths in 2017. In 2016 the Centers for Disease Control (CDC) and Prevention issued guidelines for opioid prescribing that included opioid dosing and risk mitigation strategies, and health systems implemented similar initiatives even earlier. This has resulted in a quickly changing and more conservative prescribing environment. National data indicate the number of prescriptions has fallen between 2013 and 2016. Registries and electronic health record (EHR) data are increasingly cited as valuable resources to address critical research questions on opioid use with high efficiency. To our knowledge, no investigators have established an EHR-based prescription opioid registry across several diverse health systems with common data algorithms with the flexibility to address multiple questions. The goal of the proposed research is to develop a prescription opioid registry across ten diverse health systems with harmonized electronic health record (EHR) data from years 2012-2018, and leverage it to answer several key “next step” research questions in response to the opioid crisis. The registry will include medications prescribed for treatment of OUD, including buprenorphine products.

Funded by the NIH HEAL InitiativeSM.

    Node Involvement

    Lead Node(s):

  • Health Systems Node

  • All Participating Nodes:

  • Health Systems Node