Your role in opioid stewardship
In 2019, the PENNJ-SOS Steering Committee disseminated procedure-specific prescribing guidelines to promote opioid stewardship within the collaborative. PENNJ-SOS leaders synthesized multiple prescribing recommendations – including those created by Michigan OPEN, ISQIC, the Mayo Clinic, Johns Hopkins, and the City of Philadelphia – to inform consensus-based PENNJ-SOS procedure-specific discharge prescribing guidelines. Considerations included surgical approach and patient opioid exposure/naiveté.
Promoting safe opioid use with your patients begins with effective, easy-to-understand education. The patient-friendly, health-literate video and print resources on this website will help you communicate with your patients about their surgery and related pain management and opioid use. We’ve also developed helpful strategies to guide hospital implementation of these materials.
Download the entire suite of designed print materials below.
About PANC

The Pennsylvania NSQIP Consortium focuses on sharing data and best practices, identifying quality improvement opportunities, and initiating quality improvement programs and measure performance aimed at enhancing surgical patient outcomes.
Visit the PANC PENNJ-SOS website for clinical resources including the custom Opioid Discharge Prescribing Guidelines and PANC Opioid Stewardship Best Practice Presentations. Here, you will also find data collection information and Surgical Clinical Reviewer resources, including a data entry manual and instructions for interacting with the Pennsylvania PDMP system.
Provider Educational Toolkit
For clinicians and care teams, this toolkit offers resources that help create and promote a culture of opioid stewardship.
Patient Education Materials
Access individual patient resources on our Patients & Caregivers page, or click below to download the entire materials suite.
Other Resources
- American College of Surgeons (ACS): Strong for Surgery Toolkit
- City of Philadelphia: Opioid prescribing and tapering guidelines
- Michigan Opioid Prescribing Engagement Network (MI OPEN)
- Illinois Surgical Quality Improvement Collaborative (ISQIC) Surgeons Tackling the Opioid Problem in Illinois (STOP-Illinois)
- CDC Pocket Guide: Tapering Opioids for Chronic Pain
Data Collection & Analysis
A collaborative of hospital teams collect and enter opioid-related data into NSQIP registry on select clinical measures. Teams then use results to drive improvement in their organizations, and they discuss their findings at PANC meetings.
Data is collected on cases performed on or after September 1, 2018. Eight relevant custom fields were developed and have been added to the ACS NSQIP platform. Variables included capture data on pre-operative use of opioids and benzodiazepines; types and levels of anesthesia and intraoperative opioids; pain management approaches; and post-operative opioid prescribing and use. For more information, contact us.