CHIME Opioid Task Force Welcomes 2 New Co-chairs, Releases Playbook Chapters 

ANN ARBOR, MI, Feb. 26, 2019 – The College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME) named two new co-chairs to help lead the CHIME Opioid Task Force in 2019, marking the task force’s transition from its launch phase to long-term sustainability. The task force also announced the availability of the first three chapters of an opioid playbook for CIOs.

 

Patricia Lavely, senior vice president and CIO at Gwinnett Medical Center, and Dave Lehr, vice president and CIO at Anne Arundel Medical Center, will serve as the 2019 co-chairs of the task force. They join founding co-chair Ed Kopetsky, CIO at Lucile Packard Children’s Hospital Stanford and Stanford Children’s Health. Jim Turnbull, CIO at University of Utah Health Care, stepped down as founding co-chair earlier this month. 

 

“Ed and Jim have done an amazing job in just one year,” said Russell Branzell, president and CEO of CHIME. “Their vision and leadership helped us build the task force from the ground up into a resource that is now used around the world. There are people alive today because of this task force, and because of the commitment of Ed, Jim, Patty, Dave and all of the other task force members.”

 

The Opioid Task Force was launched in early 2018 to leverage the healthcare IT expertise of members in CHIME and the CHIME Foundation to combat the nation’s opioid epidemic. The Kopetsky family’s loss of son Tim from an accidental opioid overdose served as a catalyst for forming the task force. Building off CHIME’s strengths as an educational and policy leader, the task force focused on hosting free and open educational webinars and advocating for federal policies to reduce the risk of opioid exposure, addiction and overdose death. To date, CHIME has hosted six educational webinars, submitted 12 opioid-related letters and statements to federal policy makers and worked closely with congressional and federal agency staff to help shape opioid policies.

 

The task force also posted the first three chapters of the Opioid Task Force Playbook, which provides a framework to build IT-based supports for launching and maintaining systemwide initiatives to reduce unnecessary opiate prescriptions that can lead to addiction. It is based on the knowledge, experience and insights from CHIME members and CHIME Foundation partners, with real-world examples, best practices and links to resources. Members are working on the final chapters now.

 

The CHIME Opioid Task Force will continue its educational and policy initiatives while also setting the foundation for the CHIME Opioid Health IT Action Center. The Health IT Action Center will serve as a repository to house resources for healthcare organizations seeking tools and information to implement systems and practices to address the opioid crisis. The task force recently kicked off a fundraising campaign to support the CHIME Opioid Health IT Action Center and is nearly halfway to its goal of raising $750,000 through donations and pledges.   

 

“The Opioid Task Force has achieved far more than we dreamed it could in a year but we still have much more we must do to stem the tide in the opioid crisis,” Kopetsky said. “With financial support and Patty and Dave now joining me as co-chairs, the task force will accelerate our initiatives to make a difference. We won’t let up.”

 

The College of Healthcare Information Management Executives (CHIME) is an executive organization dedicated to serving chief information officers (CIOs), chief medical information officers (CMIOs), chief nursing information officers (CNIOs) and other senior healthcare IT leaders. With more than 2,800 members in 51 countries and over 150 healthcare IT business partners and professional services firms, CHIME provides a highly interactive, trusted environment enabling senior professional and industry leaders to collaborate; exchange best practices; address professional development needs; and advocate the effective use of information management to improve the health and healthcare in the communities they serve. For more information, please visit chimecentral.org.

 

Candace Stuart

Director of Communications and Public Relations, CHIME

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