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3/19/25 Naloxone Orders for adults - Cerner Rule

March 19, 2025

Beginning this afternoon, Cerner will begin automatically placing the P&T approved naloxone order for any adult inpatient at a Madison County facility at the time an opiate is ordered.  This includes Once, PRN, scheduled, and drip/PCA orders.   The rule will only place the order if there is NOT an active order for naloxone either previously ordered or being ordered at the same time.   The rule will also NOT place an order for patients that are "Comfort Care."  The rule will NOT be able to retroactively place orders.

1 potential situation where this may not work is when verifying postop pain medications while the anesthesia powerplan is still active.  Since the anesthesia orders have a narcan order on them, the rule will not place an order if you verify the pain meds before the anesthesia powerplan is removed.  If you wait and verify the pain meds until AFTER the anesthesia powerplan is removed, the rule will appropriately place the order.

The rule in Sentri-7 currently identifies scheduled opioid orders without naloxone and will remain the same for now.  Eventually we will update Sentri-7 to include PRN orders, but we will wait and do this after the rule has been active for a while. 

Reminder - this is a TJC initiative and should help our numbers tremendously.

Let us know if there are any questions / issues.

Patrick Newman, Pharm. D., BCPS, BCPPS

Pharmacy Department

Huntsville Hospital

(256) 265-9623 Office

(205) 910-6894 Cell