North York General Hospital joins Cut the Count campaign

Cut the count

Cut the Count is a new surgical quality improvement campaign from Health Quality Ontario (HQO) aimed at reducing the number of opioid pills prescribed to surgical patients at discharge. North York General Hospital (NYGH) is one of 47 hospitals in the province participating in the campaign. Over the course of a year, Cut the Count aims to have hospitals cut the number of opioids prescribed by 30%.

Significant research around the amount of pain medication prescribed to day surgery patients has been carried out at North York General by Dr. Sanjho Srikandarajah, an Anesthesiologist, and a team comprised of surgeons, pharmacists and nurse practitioners. NYGH shared insights from our research with the National Surgical Quality Improvement Program and HQO, which evaluated prescribing patterns and made recommendations to safely reduce the number of opioids patients receive. As a result of this work we have already implemented changes to reduce the number of opioids prescribed to day surgery patients by almost 50%.

Improving surgical quality

NYGH is participating in Heath Quality Ontario’s Cut the Count campaign, which is aimed at reducing the number of opioids prescribed to surgical patients by 30%.

In addition to our research contributions to reduce opioid prescriptions in hospital, NYGH’s pharmacy team also partnered with Institute for Safe Medication Practices Canada to develop patient education material about proper storage and disposal of prescription medication.

NYGH will continue to build on the work we’ve started on reducing opioid use as part of the Cut the Count, which has the potential to impact thousands of people. Approximately 80% of patients undergoing surgery in the province will be discharged from one of the 47 participating hospitals. Working with HQO we will track our progress and share best practices around establishing new prescribing protocols.

Stay tuned for more exciting updates!

 

 

 

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