Program objective
Use data-driven insights to inform action.
The challenge
Opioid misuse and abuse in the U.S. has risen dramatically in recent years. Yet health experts lack a broad framework for evaluating the impact of wide-scale prevention, treatment and management efforts. Problems and progress have been difficult to discern.
This is the kind of challenge that OptumLabs was designed to work on. Seeking a solution, we convened experts from across the health care system and used claims data to develop a dashboard of 29 key performance indicators (KPIs) to identify trends: problems, gaps and bright spots related to the opioid crisis.
Our role
The resulting KPIs span four domains — prevention, pain management, OUD treatment, and maternal and child health — and have been the catalyst for innovative research and translation efforts among diverse stakeholders within our collaborative and beyond.
A sampling of our work within these domains includes:
Prevention
Prescribing of extended-release opioids in non-opioid tolerant patients
FDA│Mayo Clinic│OptumLabs│Yale
Pain management
Conservative therapies for low back pain as antidote to opioid use
American Physical Therapy Association│Boston University│OptumLabs│UnitedHealthcare
OUD treatment
Comparative effectiveness of OUD treatment pathways
Boston Medical Center│Massachusetts General Hospital│Optum Behavioral Health│OptumLabs
Maternal and child health
Neonatal abstinence syndrome collaborative model
Optum Labs│State of Tennessee│UnitedHealthcare Community & State
Opioid Insights for Action Day
Experience our event where experts convened to share ideas and partner to help reverse the opioid epidemic. Watch videos.
Collaborators
Research collaborators
- Mayo Clinic
- University of California, San Francisco
- University of California, Davis
- Johns Hopkins University
- Harvard Medical School
- Boston University School of Public Health
- Boston Medical Center
- Massachusetts General Hospital
- Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC)
- Food and Drug Administration (FDA)
Opioid expert advisory panel
- Thomas McLellan, PhD, University of Pennsylvania
- Mark Wallace, MD, University of California San Diego
- Munish Gupta, MD, Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center, NeoQIC
- Rob Saper, MD, Boston University School of Medicine and Public Health
- Kun Zhang, PhD, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Prescription Drug Overdose-Health Systems Team
- Ellen Meara, PhD, Dartmouth College
- Yngvild Olsen, MD, American Society of Addiction Medicine (FASAM)
- Joji Suzuki, MD, Harvard Medical School; Brigham and Women's Hospital
- Paul Christo, MD, Johns Hopkins University
- Michael Hooten, MD, Mayo Clinic
- Molly Jeffery, PhD, Mayo Clinic
- Don Schwarz, MD, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
- Audra Stock, LPC, MAC, Substance Abuse and Mental Health Services Administration (SAMHSA)
- Julie Mae Fritz, PT, PhD, University of Utah
- Gary Franklin, MD, University of Washington
Research sponsors
- American Physical Therapy Association (APTA)
- Robert Wood Johnson Foundation
- UnitedHealthcare
