Unhooked: Tackling Opioid Addiction and Behavioral Health Conditions through a Population health model

by Chris Powell, Jill S. Warrington

Overview

The Path to Overcoming the Opioid Addiction Crisis
For over twenty years, America's opioid addiction crisis has been spiraling out of control-and the COVID-19 pandemic just made matters worse. Even though billions of dollars are spent annually on substance use disorder (SUD) treatment, the patient numbers keep climbing-because of a misguided focus on episodic health emergencies rather than long-term care that's proven to be much more effective and cost-efficient.
Clearly, it's time for a radically new approach, and in Unhooked, healthcare experts Chris Powell and Dr. Jill Warrington deliver just that. Their new revolutionary holistic care strategy is built around a multipronged policy that: • removes the stigma of opioid addiction by treating it as a chronic illness, not human weakness; • leverages data and analytics to provide more comprehensive individual care; • removes common barriers to recovery; • reduces the cost of care; • creates equity for SUD and behavioral health management; and • identifies prevention strategies that can block disease progression. Most importantly, Powell and Warrington outline a practical step-by-step strategy to inspire and implement change in your organization. If society is truly to become "unhooked," this book provides a proven path to wellness that can get the job done.

Product Details

ISBN-13:	9781642251715
Publisher:	Advantage Media Group, Inc.
Publication date:	05/17/2022
Pages:	272
Product dimensions:	6.00(w) x 9.00(h) x 0.71(d)

About the Author

CHRIS POWELL grew up in an alcoholic household, where he experienced the trials and traumas of addiction firsthand. As an adult, he spent his career at the crossroads of healthcare and innovation. He has served as vice president and general manager of GE Healthcare, overseeing the company’s efforts in Canada and Central and South America. Chris then served as CEO of Precyse, a health information management and services company that covered medical coding, healthcare education, and a service-enabled technology platform to improve coding and workflow. Becoming CEO at Aspenti Health, Chris recognized the criticality of the work in the field and rallied investors to support a new vision: the application of a population health strategy to the treatment of substance use disorders (SUD). Leveraging a preexisting randomization platform used to support specimen collections and testing, Chris’s team created a novel digital service replete with a diagnostic module that supports test ordering and resulting, ICD-10 coding, community event engagement, and protocol management. He also promoted digital educational content development distributed across partner networks and a new population-health analytics program. This vision propelled the company to a new level and provided a powerful and effective service to providers in the region.

JILL S. WARRINGTON has spent the past twenty-five years in healthcare. Beginning her career as a federally funded MD-PhD student, Jill bridged the clinical and research worlds, recognizing the critical nature of translational medicine and the value of applying research principles to clinical service work. With a PhD in pharmacology, Jill was exposed to the operations of pharmaceutical companies and the principles of laboratory medicine. Through her academic career, she has learned from some of the best at Princeton University, Tufts School of Medicine and Graduate Sciences, Duke University, and now the University of Vermont. Throughout her career, she has brought thought leadership to her endeavors, publishing pioneering research on innovations in SUD and spearheading a number of grant-funding projects in this area. Through her work with Chris at Aspenti Health, where she served as chief medical officer, she collaborated with institutions on bold new approaches to substance-use treatment, helping to introduce new reporting strategies for laboratory-result interpretation; providing countless local, regional, and national presentations; serving as course director for digital educational content development; and championing innovative solutions in the organization, such as the introduction of a transformative testing strategy—known as comprehensive screening—to the field. Further collaborations have involved the following: a mobile unit for specimen collections during the COVID-19 pandemic; the development of a telehealth strategy for observed collections (telecollections); Lean Six Sigma operational and quality efficacies to the laboratory; and the investigation of several offerings to the digital platform, including the incorporation of social determinants of health data and the collaborative helping model. Today she serves as Director of Population Health for the Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine at the University of Vermont College of Medicine and as Laboratory Director for the Vermont Department of Health Laboratory.

Table of Contents

ACKNOWLEDGMENTS WHO WE ARE THE CURRENT STATE OF AFFAIRS THE GREATEST HEALTHCARE CRISIS OF OUR TIME ADDICTION: PERCEPTION VERSUS REALITY THE WHOLE PERSON BEHIND THE PATIENT THERE’S POWER IN NUMBERS SETTING A STICKER PRICE THE VIRTUE OF VALUE THE FIGHT FOR EQUITY TREATMENT, PREVENTION, AND THE FUTURE OF CARE REACHING THE SUMMIT: A REDESIGNED BEHAVIORAL HEALTHCARE MODEL THE WAY FORWARD EPILOGUE ASSESSMENTS AND TEMPLATES WEB-BASED RESOURCES

Editorial Reviews

Unhooked is a book that needed to be written. The opioid epidemic is the public health crisis of our lifetime. There is no shortage of advocacy groups seeking the allocation of financial resources to treat this crisis. Those of us in the trenches realize that if all of the advocates’ pleas for financial resources are answered, societally we do not have the trained staff and other resources to meet the need. Chris and Jill examine a barrier that few commentators choose to tackle in the public debate, and that is the deteriorating and spotty social safety net that varies greatly across socioeconomic lines and across varying geographies of our nation. Until addiction treatment can be delivered in the context of a population health management model, it will remain difficult to consistently produce successful outcomes.”
–Drew Rothermel, CEO, BRC Healthcare

“Before the attention of society was shifted to the coronavirus pandemic, we had already had a crisis of substance use disorders affecting many of our communities and our circle of friends and family. Regardless of your level of connection to this topic, personal or professional, I hope you find this book to be informative, engaging, and empowering. Both Jill and Chris make the case for why we need to act and how we can take steps to improve our healthcare delivery systems.” –Mark Fung, MD, PhD, Vice Chair for Population Health, Department of Pathology and Laboratory Medicine, The University of Vermont Health Network

From the Publisher