UCI Health honored for opioid stewardship
Health system is one of just 42 in state to receive 'superior performance' on CalHospital Compare's Opioid Honor Roll
July 12, 2023
"This accolade highlights the UCI Health role as a leader in
delivering evidenced-based, empathetic care to patients who
have opioid use disorder," says UCI Health emergency medicine
physician Dr. Bharath Chakravarthy.
Orange, Calif. — UCI Health is one of just 42 hospitals in the state to receive a “Superior Performance" on CalHospital Compare’s Opioid Care Honor Roll. It is the third consecutive year the academic health system has been honored.
To address California’s opioid epidemic and accelerate hospital progress to reduce opioid related deaths, CHC publishes an annual Opioid Care Honor Roll to support continued quality improvement and recognize hospitals for their contributions fighting the epidemic.
“We’re committed to following the highest standards of opioid stewardship,” said Dr. Joseph Carmichael, chief medical officer at UCI Health. “This practice saves lives and saves families that would otherwise be destroyed by opioids.”
"This accolade highlights the UCI Health role as a leader in delivering evidenced based empathetic care to patients who have opioid use disorder,” said Dr. Bharath Chakravarthy, professor of clinical emergency medicine and public health at UCI Health.
Since 2019, CHC has used the Opioid Management Hospital Self-Assessment to assess performance and progress across four areas:
- Safe and effective opioid use
- Identifying and treating patients with opioid use disorder
- Overdose prevention
- Applying cross-cutting opioid management best practices
In 2015, UCI Health also helped launch the Orange County Collaborative on Prescription Drug Abuse, also known as SafeRx OC. The coalition of 19 organizations includes health professionals, educators, health insurers and law enforcement officials fighting prescription drug abuse and overdose deaths in the county.
Hospitals that achieve a superior performance rating have implemented advanced, innovative opioid stewardship strategies across multiple service lines, consistently achieving the highest level of performance.
Additionally, they actively measure and monitor performance for continuous quality improvement.
About CalHospital Compare
For more than a decade, CalHospital Compare (CHC) has been providing Californians with objective hospital performance ratings. CHC is a non-profit organization that is governed by a multi-stakeholder board, with representatives from hospitals, purchasers, consumer groups, and health plans. CHC uses an open and collaborative process to aggregate multiple sources of public data, and to establish relevant measures and scoring.
About UCI Health
UCI Health is the clinical enterprise of the University of California, Irvine, and the only academic health system in Orange County. Patients can access UCI Health at primary and specialty care offices across Orange County and at its main campus, UCI Medical Center in Orange, Calif. The 459-bed, acute care hospital, listed among America’s Best Hospitals by U.S. News & World Report for 22 consecutive years, provides tertiary and quaternary care, ambulatory and specialty medical clinics, behavioral health and rehabilitation services. UCI Medical Center is home to Orange County’s only National Cancer Institute-designated comprehensive cancer center, high-risk perinatal/neonatal program and American College of Surgeons-verified Level I adult and Level II pediatric trauma center and regional burn center. UCI Health serves a region of nearly 4 million people in Orange County, western Riverside County and southeast Los Angeles County. Follow us on Facebook, Instagram, LinkedIn and Twitter.
