Page 33 - GCN, August/September 2018

Industry Insight
BY MANUEL FIGALLO
How analytics helps reduce opioid use disorder among Medicare patients
There has long been a perception that victims of the opioid epidemic fall into a certain category: Young adults who become hooked on a drug such as heroin and overdose.
Although that number, like many others related to the opioid crisis, continues to increase, it only tells a partial story.
Opioid use disorder among senior citizens is
on the rise. Most are not using heroin — although that number is going up
as well — but instead they are becoming hooked on opioids their doctors have prescribed for a range of ailments, from minor aches and pains to more serious chronic conditions.
The Medicare population, in particular, has some of the highest and fastest- growing rates of diagnosed opioid use disorder, cur- rently at more than six of every 1,000 beneficiaries.
Data analytics has helped shine a light on the strug- gles of older Americans. An analysis of data from the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services identified 225,000 beneficiaries who received potentially unsafe opioid dosing.
Analyzing the data re- veals trends that can answer questions about the opioid issue. For instance, are these patients clustered geo-
graphically? Do they suffer from a similar ailment? Is there a pattern in the type of doctors they see? Do they have similar medical histories?
If trends and patterns can be identified, health officials can create policies and procedures inside the larger Medicare program to curtail the factors that lead to opioid use disorder.
population in different ways.
Federal agencies collect an untold amount of data through different programs and on the population in general. That data, though, only has value when it is analyzed for actionable insights.
Data analytics can go beyond the limitations of human analysts to find big-
Data analytics can deliver real insights into the prob- lems people face and give agencies the information they need to make dramatic changes.
Government agencies have already used data analytics to help protect at- risk children, reduce human trafficking and improve high school graduation rates.
Using spatial economic modeling on a high-powered analytics platform, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services has identified high-risk clusters of patients.
In fact, CMS has already used spatial economic modeling on a high-powered analytics platform to iden- tify high-risk clusters of patients.
With that informa-
tion, the agency can make changes in treatment and policies to ensure that older patients are not prescribed opioids they don’t need so that they can avoid the risk of addiction.
The opioid crisis is a varied and layered problem. There is no one solution that will help all patients because the crisis affects different segments of the
ger trends in large amounts of data and to explore connections human analysts might miss.
The use of data analyt-
ics to help battle the opioid crisis is an example of the government using data for good. Federal agencies have turned to data analytics
to improve internal op- erations, and there is also a movement to use the same platforms to help the public.
By using data analytics to enhance public programs, government agencies at
all levels can make im- provements in the lives of citizens.
That is only the starting point. Data analytics can help improve almost any government program.
Every agency has a mission that comes down in some way to helping people. As the opioid crisis has shown, delivery of that mission can be incredibly difficult.
Data analytics can be a catalyst for change and pro- vide government officials with vital information to make a true difference. • — Manuel Figallo is a prin- cipal systems engineer at the SAS Institute.
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