State Engagement to Address Opioid Overprescribing and Misuse

As project and technical lead, I oversee the management and technical direction for this project. I work closely with sponsors from the Centers of Medicare and Medicaid Services and New Hampshire State Officials while directing an interdisciplinary team of 30 staff members to achieve the project’s outcomes. I had the pleasure of working with a diverse group of individuals, from statisticians and computer scientists, to clinicians and opioid experts, to communications and fraud specialists.

This project focused on using data to understand opioid prescribing habits with the goal of being able to identify abnormal prescribing habits. In order to do this, we utilized various analytical techniques from custom heuristics to statistical models to machine learning models. In order for our sponsors to fully utilize the results from the analytical models, we supported the creation of two working groups in New Hampshire. The first group, the Opioid Prescribing Advisory Council, which helps advise the approaches on the analytics and how data is used, but will support New Hampshire in recommending policy changes to curb opioid overprescribing behaviors. The second group, the Program Integrity Task Force, utilizes the results from the analytics to collaborate and reduce opioid overprescribing in the state. Lastly, this project created an interactive dashboard to measure the states progress in reducing opioid overprescribing.