Alex Cohen is the Director of Learning and Evaluation for the Richard M. Fairbanks Foundation. A patient visits a doctor. He suffers from chronic pain. In fact, he’s been suffering for a while, and he’s been receiving painkillers for months. And recently, he’s been upping his dosage and visiting multiple doctors to get enough. But the doctor he’s seeing today doesn’t know this. If she knew about his prescription history, she might engage him in a conversation about his opioid use, suggest alternative pain remedies or even refer him to substance abuse treatment. Instead, she writes him a prescription, and he leaves. Making patients’ opioid prescription histories readily accessible to […]

Claire Fiddian-Green is the President & CEO of the Richard M. Fairbanks Foundation. The opioid epidemic isn’t over yet, as evidenced by the latest data from the CDC, which shows that overdose deaths continue to rise – and opioids are the leading cause of these deaths. Addressing the epidemic will take a multi-pronged approach, and a key strategy is to focus on preventing opioid misuse. One important step is to provide the latest information to doctors and other health professionals about safe prescribing practices as well as effective, non-opioid pain management alternatives for patients. This is especially important because – despite a recent decline – Indiana still has one of […]