The MetroHealth System is looking internally to strike the next blow in Ohio's battle against the opioid epidemic.
Through a concentrated focus on prescribing practices over the past year and a half, MetroHealth cut the number of opioid pills prescribed by 3 million, Dr. Akram Boutros, president and CEO of MetroHealth, announced Friday during MetroHealth's annual stakeholders meeting at the Huntington Convention Center of Cleveland.
The hospital system also looks to further drop prescription rates with the creation of a new Pain and Healing Center, which launched this week.
"There are a lot of people to blame for the opioid crisis, a crisis that kills five people in the United States every hour. There are not a lot of people taking responsibility for fixing it. We are. We want to be an example. We want to fix this problem, and we want to be a model for others," Boutros told the crowd.
During the annual meeting, Boutros also told the crowd of 700 about a new initiative to address community trauma and shared updated plans for a new 11-story, 270-bed "hospital in a park" on its main campus off West 25th Street.
"We're going to own our part of the problem," Boutros said during an interview earlier this week. "Healthcare has been so focused on alleviation of pain that we did that without a clear focus on prevention of addiction."