Technology-enabled learning collaborative program - the UW school of medicine, department of anesthesiology & pain medicine proposes to build upon an existing, evidence based, echo type…

Technology-enabled learning collaborative program - the UW school of medicine, department of anesthesiology & pain medicine proposes to build upon an existing, evidence based, echo type collaborative learning and capacity building program to expand IT to underserved areas in the wwami region (states of washington, wyoming, alaska, montana and idaho) through a technology-enabled collaborative learning program (TCLP) intended to improve retention of healthcare providers, improve the quality of care delivered and increase access to health care services. This TCLP program will increase the knowledge and skills of community practice providers who treat pain management and/or comorbid mental health and substance abuse disorders. Through this five-year collaborative agreement, the UW tele-pain team will annually add in and work with one more of the 5 wwami states to identify program partners and target audiences so that educational modules can be designed to meet their specific education/training needs. Program partners and target audience may include: ? State healthcare authority ? State hospital association ? Indian health service ? Regional health networks ? Offices of rural health/ahec ? State primary care organizations and/or primary care providers ? Behavioral health providers ? Trainees (medical students, advanced practice provider students, nursing students, behavioral health students) educational components include expanding the telepain platform to support the wwami region, evaluating the existing telepain curriculum and incorporating state specific topics to meet the needs of limited access communities. The collaborative learning and capacity building component of the program will include development of asynchronous access to telepain didactics (CME accreditation), and expansion of the pain and opioid consult phone line for providers to address the unmet need of chronic pain management. Providers and participants will have access to the paintracker data management program to facilitate O utcomes monitoring. The need for this project stems from the fact that treating pain and treating opioid use disorder remains under-resourced with numerous barriers including inadequate resources, funding barriers, and clinician factors. Challenges persist related to: pharmacologic treatments such as polypharmacy involving opioids and other sedatives; buprenorphine and new dosing approaches; provider education, provider reluctance, stigma, and insurance barriers; and pandemic-related factors such as isolation. Patients with chronic pain who are already on opioid regimens are facing increased stigma and decreased access to primary care, as primary care providers struggle with safe and appropriate opioid prescribing. These barriers can be addressed (in part) by providing additional education and training to health professionals who serve these populations in frontier/rural and underserved areas. The primary goals of this proposed program include:1) determine the opportunity for expansion of an existing evidence based echo type collaborative learning program into all five states served by the university of washington school of medicine's multistate medical education program wwami; 2) improve/strengthen the knowledge, skills, confidence, self-efficacy and treatment practices of the target audience with regards to chronic pain management and substance use disorders; 3) develop a process for using data analysis to identify a population health management plan that focuses on chronic pain management for the medical communities that serve wwami states, and 4) sustainability and replicability on a national level.