ASA Applauds President's Commitment to Combating Opioid Epidemic During State of the Union

On Tuesday, February 5, President Donald Trump delivered his State of the Union address, during which he referenced ongoing efforts to combat the nation’s opioid epidemic, one of the key priorities of the American Society of Anesthesiologists. 
 
ASA has continued to promote efforts to reduce the use of opioids in the surgical setting, including ongoing partnerships between the government and invested stakeholders like the nation’s physician anesthesiologists.
 
ASA’s collaboration with Premier, Inc. and their network of hospitals in a nationwide opioid safety pilot has shown promise reducing harm associated with the use of opioids in patients undergoing certain high-volume surgical procedures.  The collaboration will be scaled for more hospitals this year.  Similarly, ASA’s Perioperative Surgical Home (PSH) model of care offers an innovative approach to assuring optimal care to patients by coordinating care and tailoring the treatment plan to needs of the individual patient, reducing the unnecessary use of opioids, and implementing multimodal pain relief regimens.
 
Additionally, in 2013, ASA and the White House Office of National Drug Control Policy (ONDCP) worked together to develop an Opioid Overdose Resuscitation card, which provides easy-to-understand lifesaving techniques to help friends and family save someone suspected of an opioid overdose. When the card was released, ONDCP sent a standalone-email-update asking individuals to download the card. Since then, the card has been shared with partner organizations and government leaders, as wells as distributed by physicians and patient advocates. It is available for download on the ASA website and has also been distributed to 330,000 members of the Fraternal Order of Police.