Hospital and Physician Update

July – August 2019

A roundup of recent news and information

Statewide partners commit $5 million for programs to treat opioid addition
Gov. Gretchen Whitmer and the Michigan Opioid Partnership announced last month that a combination of public and private funds totaling $5 million in grants will support programs for people with opioid use disorder. Grants will fund the planning, training and coordination of treatment for opioid use disorder, including the use of medication-assisted treatment.

Two hospital systems across the state will receive grants to pilot projects designed to help change the culture in hospitals to better combat the opioid epidemic: Beaumont Hospital and Munson Medical Center. The hospitals will receive grants of more than $1.3 million for projects that utilize medication-assisted treatment in partnership with outpatient treatment providers. Additional hospital grants are expected to be announced in the coming months.

For complete details, see the MI Blues Perspectives blog.

2019 Opioid Progress Report released
The American Medical Association has released its 2019 Opioid Progress Report — the third year that the AMA has reported on actions that physicians have taken to help end the nation's opioid epidemic. The report shows significant decreases in opioid prescribing as well as increases in the use of prescription drug monitoring programs and naloxone prescriptions. Here are some key findings:

• Opioid prescriptions decreased 33% between 2013 through 2018 from 251.8 million to 168.8 million.
• PDMP use increased to 462 million in 2018, a 56% increase from 2017.
• More than 66,000 physicians and other health care professionals have a federal waiver to prescribe buprenorphine in-office for the treatment of opioid use disorder — an increase of more than 28,000 since 2016.

In addition to the national data, the AMA also released state-level data for opioid prescribing and PDMP use.

Nonopioid advance directive now available online
In response to the state law that allows patients to refuse opioid medications by placing a form in their medical file, the Michigan Department of Health and Human Services has made the Nonopioid Directive form available to the public on its website.

The law was signed last year and went into effect in late March. There are exceptions in the law, including a provision that a prescriber or a nurse under the order of a prescriber may administer an opioid if it’s deemed medically necessary for treatment.

The form can be downloaded at Michigan.gov/opioids.* Simply click on the Find Help tab and scroll down to the Additional Resources section of the page.

*Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan doesn’t own or control this website.

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