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To find more about our local programme please contact Natasha Callender, Senior Project Manager and Medicines Workstream Lead.
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Reducing harm for people with chronic pain by reducing the prescribing of opioids
August 7, 2023Introduction
At the Health Innovation Network (HIN) South London we developed a local programme across south London in response to the nationally commissioned Medicines Safety Improvement Programme (MedSIP). The Patient Safety Collaboratives (PSCs) are working with at least 50% of Integrated Care Boards (ICBs) across England, and will collectively achieve the ambition to improve care for people with persistent (chronic, non-cancer) pain by reducing opioid analgesic use by the end of March 2025:
- 25,000 fewer people are prescribed oral or transdermal opioids (of any dose) for more than 3 months compared to 31st March 2024.
- 4,500 fewer people are prescribed high-dose opioids (greater than or equal to 120mg oral morphine equivalent/day) compared to 31st March 2024.
The approach to improving the management of chronic non-cancer pain will involve raising awareness, shared learning, testing and scaling models of care that enable personalised care and shared decision-making, biopsychosocial support and supported self-management.
“All too often the complexity of having chronic pain and of helping people and professionals to manage pain are overlooked. High prescriptions of opioids can be a result. I’m delighted that this work has looked at how to manage pain as well as reducing harm from opioids.” Natasha Curran, Consultant in Anaesthesia and Pain Medicine at UCL Hospitals and Medical Director of the Health Innovation Network.
Our local programme covered the following:
Working with staff to drive improvement
We worked with clinicians across South London through our Opioid Stewardship Quality Improvement Collaborative (2022/23) to deliver projects to make local improvements. Please click here to find out more.
We delivered an opioid action learning set series with local and national partners affiliated with the British Pain Society, European Federation of Pain, Royal College of General Practitioners and Royal College of Psychiatrists. The content from the series has been used to create an opioid QI project guide to give clinicians ideas of projects they could deliver locally.
Using opioid prescribing data for system audit-feedback
We shared local opioid prescribing data packs with GP practices across south London based on the Campaign to Reduce Opioid Prescribing . Please click here to find out more.
Working in partnership with people living with chronic pain
At the HIN, we seek to understand, design, and improve the experience of health and care for staff, service users, and patients. We believe that this requires a deeper understanding, using people’s personal experiences to improve things.
We facilitated an experience-based co-design project using the Point of Care Foundation methodology. The aim of the project was to improve chronic pain management by bringing patients and staff lived and learnt experiences together to prioritise and co-design solutions as equal partners. Please click here to find out more.
We are working with King’s Health Partners, Pain: Equality of Care and Support within the Community (PEACS) programme and the University of Warwick, I-WOTCH (Improving the Wellbeing of People With Opioid Treated Chronic Pain) to test out and support scaling biopsychosocial alternatives to opioids and supported self-management programmes.
You can read more about developments with our local programme here in our blogs:
