Background: Drug product shortages, including injectable opioids, are common and have the potential to adversely affect patient care. Objective: To evaluate the impact of an injectable opioid shortage for hospitalized adult patients in the acute postoperative setting. Methods: A single-center, retrospective cohort study of noncritically ill hospitalized, postoperative patients requiring opioids for acute pain management was conducted. Patient cohorts were compared preshortage and postshortage for proportion of total intravenous (IV) opioids used, proportions of specific pain medications used, subjective pain scores, 30-day mortality, respiratory depression, need for opioid reversal, hospital length of stay, and opioid equivalent doses. Results: A total of 275 patients were included, 130 patients in the preshortage cohort and 145 in the postshortage cohort. The proportion of total IV opioid doses was lower in the postshortage cohort versus the preshortage cohort (16.6% vs 20.5%; P < 0.01). Specific medications used were significantly different between the cohorts. The proportion of severe pain scores was lower in the postshortage cohort versus the preshortage cohort (55.6% vs 58.5%; P = 0.04). No significant differences were seen in the overall proportion of nonopioid analgesic use, 30-day mortality, respiratory depression, need for emergent opioid reversal, hospital length of stay, or opioid equivalent doses between cohorts. Conclusion and Relevance: In hospitalized, postoperative adults, an injectable opioid shortage was associated with significant decreases in IV opioid use and severe pain scores but no significant differences in nonopioid analgesic use, safety outcomes, or opioid equivalent doses. These results may assist clinicians in developing strategies for injectable opioid shortages and generating hypotheses for future studies.

Introduction:The national opioid epidemic has garnered the attention of various health agencies. A leading strategy in mitigating risk from the opioid public health crisis, including opioid use disorder (OUD), is via increased promotion and access to the lifesaving opioid antagonist, naloxone. Pharmacists have been recognized as integral in addressing this emergency; however, literature evaluating outcomes from multifaceted clinical pharmacy specialist (CPS) interventions and involvement is lacking. The purpose of this quality improvement initiative was to evaluate the impact of a CPS initiative to increase naloxone prescribing proportions (number of patients with OUD with an active prescription for naloxone within the past year divided by the number of patients with OUD), patient access to care, and clinical interventions. Methods: Pain management CPSs, mental health CPSs, and clinical pharmacy leadership within a Veterans Health System spearheaded a variety of interventions to increase naloxone prescribing in patients with OUD including focused education with prescribers, naloxone informational letters, review of population management tools identifying patients with OUD indicated to receive naloxone, CPS naloxone prescribing, and automated naloxone drug orders integrated into electronic health record progress note templates. The preintervention and postintervention evaluation periods were three-month time frames. Naloxone prescribing proportions were compared before and after implementation of these interventions. Additional outcomes evaluated were number of encounters, number of patients seen/reviewed, and number of clinical interventions completed by the CPSs.Results: There was a significant increase observed in naloxone prescribing proportions from 34.1% to 57.5% postintervention (P < .01). The total number of encounters, patients, and clinical interventions had an absolute increase of 58.0%, 88.4%, and 49.9%, respectively, postintervention. Conclusion:The observed improvement in naloxone prescribing proportions suggests the value of CPS involvement in initiatives for increasing naloxone prescribing to optimize patient safety and justify clinical pharmacy services.