Assessing the Problem Healthcare Quality Safety & Cost Considerations
Opioid analgesics maintain effectiveness in the management of chronic pain. Chronic pain affects millions of Americans, with research findings putting the prevalence of chronic pain at 18-45%. As this number rises, the number of people requiring opioid analgesics also rises. The current opioid addiction crisis has shed light on the challenges related to prescription and illicit opioid use. This crisis has resulted in quality compromises in the American health systems and continues to jeopardize the safety of the patients. The healthcare costs incurred in managing the crisis are also high. This paper details how the opioid crisis has impacted the quality of care, the safety of the patients, and its cost considerations.
The Impact of Opioid Crisis on the Quality of Care, Patient Safety, and Costs to the System and Individual
As the opioid addiction crisis continues to ravage healthcare systems in the U.S., healthcare providers and organizations are implored to uphold high-quality care in their interventions to preserve lives. However, the crisis continues to lower the quality of care processes, resulting in increased morbidity and mortality from overdose and addiction. As the prevalence of opioid misuse and overdose increases, the subsequent burden on the healthcare system compromises the quality of care. Samuels et al. (2019) report that the current opioid crisis has resulted in fragmentation of care with no recognizable quality indicators utilized in managing opioid use disorders. This fragmented approach has lowered the effectiveness of care responses to the prevention of opioid misuse and overdose as well as the treatment responses that are required at the emergency departments to reduce the mortality risks. However, the quality improvement guidelines designed by the CDC have maintained significance in informing preventive measures for all at-risk patients. Implementing these guidelines on prescription opioid use is aimed at saving lives and is in concert with guidelines on prescription opioid use in managing chronic pain.
The safety of the patients remains a priority care intervention for all healthcare organizations. The opioid epidemic has considerably jeopardized safety safeguards in communities established by various public health agencies and the healthcare system. Many lives continue to be lost as a result of overdose and addiction to opioids despite heightened awareness of the harmful effects of opioid use. In the U.S., 37.8% of adults use prescription opioid analgesics. Misuse of these medications has been reported in over 11 million adult Americans. The consequent addiction and overdose are also increasingly reported in healthcare systems across the U.S., with over 1.9 million people developing opioid use disorder (van den Brink et al., 2022). Safety compromises in the opioid crisis also stretch beyond the affected individuals to the neighborhoods they live in. Zhong et al. (2020) demonstrate a nexus between illicit opioid use to violence risk in neighborhoods with opioid users.
The opioid addiction crisis fetches considerable economic costs. Research findings place estimates of the healthcare costs of the opioid crisis at over 78 billion dollars (Sanyal, 2021). These costs encompass healthcare costs incurred when treating patients presenting with opioid addictions and overdose and the logistical costs used in facilitating treatment processes. Individuals affected incur treatment costs due to out-of-pocket payments and logistical costs. Florence et al. (2021) place the economic burden of the crisis at over one trillion. This includes loss of life and reduction in the quality of life indices that have always accompanied the opioid crisis.
Nursing practice upholds, with high standards, quality care provision as a measure for preserving the lives of individuals in the community. Fragmentation of care processes and lack of universally acceptable indices of quality are against the nursing provision of concerted and collaborative care. This explains why research findings reveal that care fragmentation is attributable to quality compromises in healthcare approaches to effective interventions in the epidemic.