We gratefully acknowledge the invaluable contributions of our faculty content developers, Kevin Sevarino, MD, and Vanessa Loukas, NP, in crafting this educational material.

Target Audience: This activity is designed to improve the competence, performance, and patient outcomes of physicians, physician assistants, nurses, nurse practitioners and other health care professionals. Learners will determine individual practice gaps and address them through a performance improvement plan. Learners will assess and evaluate performance techniques used in their practices.

Our goal: The overall objective of this activity is to guide you through the process of self-evaluation using evidence-based clinical quality measures. Once practices are implemented as an everyday clinical function, it is expected that you will have achieved performance change in your practice setting.  

Educational objectives of this activity: At the conclusion of this activity, clinicians will be able to:

• Describe appropriate assessment of opioid use disorder considering severity of presentation, appropriate level of care, polysubstance use or disorders, and co-occurring psychiatric conditions
• Explain the individual characteristics of the three evidenced-based, FDA-approved medications for opioid use disorder considering their benefits and limitations
• Demonstrate understanding of clinically appropriate application of psychosocial treatments, referrals to appropriate provider or community-support groups
• Recognize indication to screen for hepatitis A (HVA), hepatitis B (HVP), hepatitis C (HVC), human immunodeficiency virus (HIV) and pregnancy and demonstrate accurate documentation of status
• Understand clinical indications for toxicology screening, overdose prevention
• Demonstrate improved performance in working with patients with opioid use disorder

Core Competencies as a result of participating in this continuing education activity: 

• Interpersonal Skills and Communication
• Medical Knowledge
• Patient Care
• Practice-based Learning and Improvement

We anticipate that completing this PIP activity will increase the likelihood that addiction specialists will offer and monitor high quality treatment for OUDs that can result in better patient-centered care and outcomes, a key theme in the development of this activity.  

Patient-Centered Care:  We anticipate that completing this PIP activity will increase the likelihood that addiction specialists will offer and monitor high quality treatment that can result in better patient-centered care and outcomes, a key theme in the development of this activity. Patient-centered care is defined by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, as: “helping people and their caregivers communicate and make informed health care decisions, allowing their voices to be heard in assessing the value of health care options.” Some questions that reflect patient-centered considerations include: (1) “Given my personal characteristics, conditions and preferences, what should I expect will happen to me?”; (2)“What are my options and what are the potential benefits and harms of those options?”; and (3) “What can I do to improve the outcomes that are most important to me?”. Consideration of patient priorities in weighing treatment options is essential to treatment success and recovery, and an integral part--along with the best research evidence and clinical expertise—of achieving high quality care and better outcomes. Patients should learn about both the efficacy and side effects of treatments and how these apply to them so they can make individualized decisions. The level of patient motivation, choice, and education about treatment options are all important factors to appropriate counseling, prescribing, adherence, and recovery. 

You MUST COMPLETE all 3 stages and the course evaluation to be awarded credit. The Self-Assessment Exam must be completed to earn the Self-Assessment Credit (ABPN-MOC-2). Partial credit will not be awarded. 

This PIP and SA activity follows the AMA-standardized three-stage process of a PI CME that includes: 

Stage A: Data Collection: Assess your practice behaviors.

• Review introductory material. Expected duration 30-60 minutes.

• Review the 10 Clinical Quality Measures of this PIP

• Review 5 patient charts where utilizing these techniques were considered. Expected duration 30-60 minutes.

Stage B: Application and Intervention: Develop and follow your own improvement plan. 

• We will provide you with tools to evaluate your current practice.

• Develop a quality improvement plan. You will identify areas in need of improvement and construct an effective performance improvement plan for change. Having reviewed your chart audit data, you will identify at least one clinical measure to improve while accessing PIP tools to support and sustain the changes.

• You will be given the opportunity to ask five (5) of your patients to evaluate your practice. 

• It is likely (and recommended) that Stage B may take 3-6 months to complete.  In Stage B, you will construct an effective performance improvement plan utilizing PIP tools in order to implement change on the measure you identified in Stage A.

Stage C: Reassessment and Review: Reassess your practice to measure the effects of your improvement plan (post intervention measurement).  

• You will reassess performance via chart audit by again selecting 5 patient charts for reassessment and entering non-identifying data as before.