Safeguarding Against Diversion

The resources below are guidelines to help prevent against diversion in hospitals and communities.

• Post-Surgery Prescription Program – Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center, Lebanon, NH (March 2017): Effort to prevent long-term painkiller use and diversion of pills to illegal users by limiting the number of narcotic pills prescribed to post-surgical patients and educating them on nonnarcotic painkiller options.
• American Society of Health System Pharmacists Guidelines on Preventing Diversion of Controlled Substances. (2017) These ASHP guidelines provide evidence-based approaches to preventing opioid diversion in the inpatient setting.
• Drug Diversion: How to Avoid Becoming an Unwitting Participant. (2016) This session provides an overview of the scope of the problem and addresses why every institution needs to have a program in place to promptly detect diversion. Investigatory techniques are outlined, including analytics technology and transaction reports. Methods of diversion are explored, and there is discussion of how medical staff can avoid becoming an unwitting participant in a diversion scheme.

Case Examples

• Cuyahoga County Opiate Task Force. (2017) Cuyahoga County launched an extensive, collaborative, long-term public awareness campaign whose purpose is to educate residents about the potential dangers of opioid prescriptions.
• 6 Steps for Hospitals to Take to Prevent Prescription Drug Abuse, Diversion. (2016) This article describes six interventions that a hospital can implement to control substance diversion.