Program to improve opioid management in primary care

The Washington State Department of Health (WA DOH) is sponsoring a program, funded by the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, to improve opioid management in primary care.
Through the WA DOH program, clinics and clinical organizations across Washington State can receive guidance in implementing a team-based “best practices” approach for improved opioid prescribing and monitoring. Organizations will receive practice coaching, group, and one-on-one learning opportunities for 12-15 months to improve how they monitor and care for patients using opioid therapy for chronic non-cancer pain. This program is facilitated by experts at the University of Washington, Department of Family Medicine and Kaiser Permanente Washington Health Research Institute, MacColl Center for Health Care Innovation. The WA DOH offers this program to your clinic/organization at no cost!

The Six Building Blocks team will provide your clinic with:

• Ongoing guidance by a Practice Coach
• An in-person Kickoff Event to orient your staff and providers to the Six Building Blocks
• Assistance in developing an individual clinical organization plan for doing this work
• Provision of resources, such as a model clinic policy, treatment agreement, workflows, patient education materials, and different strategies for monitoring and tracking patients using chronic opioid therapy
• Monthly shared learning calls at which participating sites learn from each other as they implement the Six Building Blocks
• Connection to weekly University of Washington TelePain sessions for getting consultation on challenging patients
• Connection to the Washington State Prescription Monitoring Program

To successfully participate, your clinic/organization would provide:

• Vocal, engaged leadership
• Creation of an Opioid Improvement Team
• Team participation in practice coaching calls and Shared Learning Calls
• Clinician and staff participation in TelePain clinical education
• Time dedicated to the work, e.g. policy and patient agreement revision, developing and staffing  
    a tracking and monitoring program, designing new workflows 

Contact the Six Building Blocks team:

Laura-Mae Baldwin, MD, MPH, 206-685-4799, lmb@uw.edu

Michael Parchman, MD, MPH 206-287-2704, parchman.m@ghc.org  

Nicole Ide, MPH, 206-616-6760, iden8@uw.edu

The Six Building Blocks:

To learn more about the development of the Six Building Blocks, please refer to the journal article:

Parchman ML, Von Korff M, Baldwin LM, Stephens M, Ike B, Cromp D, Hsu C, Wagner EH. Primary care clinic re-design for prescription opioid management.The Journal of the American Board of Family Medicine. 2017 Jan 1;30(1):44-51. http://www.jabfm.org/content/30/1/44.short