How Inspira Health Used Near Real-Time Data to Fight the Opioid Crisis
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A rural community hospital in southern New Jersey has been at the center of the opioid crisis for years. With two of the three counties it serves reporting some of the highest opioid prescribing rates and lowest health outcomes in the state, Inspira Health Network knew it needed to take action. The organization wanted a way to address opioid prescribing risks more proactively across its hospitals and emergency departments.
The data they needed was already available in their EHR, but the system couldn’t reliably calculate Morphine Milligram Equivalents (MMEs), and extracting the data in a usable way was slow and manual. Without the ability to track prescribing patterns easily, identifying outliers or intervening in a timely way became a major challenge.
“Two of the three counties we serve were ranked the lowest in New Jersey for health outcomes and the highest for opioid prescribing at the start of the grant,” said Emily Loscalzo, PsyD, MAC, NCSE, Project Manager at Inspira Health.
To close this gap, the organization partnered with Inovalon to create and implement an opioid stewardship dashboard that transformed static EHR data into near real-time, actionable insights.
Building visibility into safer prescribing
With funding from a Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA) Rural Communities Opioid Response Program (RCORP) grant, Inspira Health expanded its opioid stewardship efforts to focus on emergency departments and alternative pain management strategies. To support this work, they implemented Inovalon’s VigiLanz Pharmacy Surveillance Pro™, which enhanced their EHR infrastructure and made it possible to calculate MMEs, view prescribing trends, and act on potential risks – all in near real-time.
“For the purposes of our grant, it’s made it a lot easier to pull the data we need, week after week,” Loscalzo explained.
The new system allowed clinical leaders to access weekly reports and raw data extracts that showed how opioids were being prescribed across emergency departments, inpatient units, and discharge processes. Dashboards could be filtered by prescriber, facility, medication type, and average MME levels, enabling more precise monitoring and insights to support opioid stewardship. Teams could also spot patterns involving polypharmacy risks, high-dose outliers, or missed chances to use non-opioid options.
Adding context to prescribing trends
Beyond prescription counts and dosages, the program also integrated ancillary data to create a fuller view of patient safety risks. By incorporating pain scores, benzodiazepine use, and substance use consults, Inspira Health gained a more holistic perspective on each patient’s care journey.
These insights empowered the team to identify issues quickly and intervene when necessary. It also meant they could support safer decision-making from clinicians throughout the organization – from frontline staff to leadership.
Turning raw data into meaningful outcomes
Within weeks, the program transformed a slow and fragmented process into a coordinated, system-wide approach to opioid stewardship. Inspira Health now had the ability to monitor opioid prescribing with speed and accuracy, and to act on that information in near real-time.
What started as a challenge to access and interpret data evolved into a dashboard-driven opioid stewardship strategy that allowed teams to pinpoint trends, track interventions, and improve patient outcomes.
From raw EHR data to actionable opioid insights, Inspira Health built the foundation for smarter, safer prescribing.
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