Samuel Schumann, MD, MSCR

Samuel Schumann is an Assistant Professor of Medicine in the Division of General Internal Medicine at The Medical University of South Carolina (MUSC). During his time as junior faculty, he completed a fellowship in General Internal Medicine through the HRSA Primary Care Training and Enhancement grant and a Master of Science in Clinical Research. His clinical and research interests are the treatment of opioid use disorder (OUD) in primary care and quality improvement (QI). On completion of the fellowship, he focused his clinical efforts on improving the treatment of pain and OUD in primary care, becoming waivered in medication assisted therapy (MAT) and treating patients in our internal medicine clinic. Project ECHO OUD, a multi-state teleconference on opioid use disorder organized through SC MAT Access, has invited him to present multiple cases during their bimonthly teleconferences.   He is a member of the team which updated the clinic’s opioid prescribing guidelines and implemented policy to align with current VA and CDC prescribing guidelines. Specifically policy updates ensured that patients on chronic opioid therapy had follow up appointments at least every 3 months, signed annual medication agreement forms, underwent urine drug screening at least annually (which coincided with availability of point of care urine drug testing) and received prescriptions only during in-person appointments. Additionally patients underwent a detailed “pain history” to clarify pain modalities, revisit prior treatments, and formulate non-opioid treatment strategies. Providers were also trained to monitor for benzodiazepine / opioid co-prescription and to monitor for patients receiving > 90 morphine milligram equivalents per day, offering naloxone co-prescription and custom opioid weaning strategies to these patients. Currently he is co-investigator and MAT faculty champion for a HRSA PCTE supplemental grant, which aims to improve the identification and treatment of OUD in primary care, emphasizing MAT. Using the electronic health record and population health virtual monitoring, all patients receiving chronic opioid therapy are screening for OUD, and if appropriate evaluated for OUD primary care clinic. He has collaborated with the Health Services Research team on numerous projects and am currently participating in projects to evaluate opioid use and prescribing patterns in South Carolina funded through grants from CDC / SC-DHEC and SC Medicaid.

Dr. Schumann continued his interest in QI and completed additional training through Institute of Healthcare Improvement’s 12 week course on Improvement Coaching. He serves as co-Vice Chair of Quality for the Department of Medicine and as the medical director for MUSC Primary Care’s Integrated Center of Clinical Excellence Quality Assurance and Process Improvement team. Through these positions He has completed QI projects at the clinic, departmental and health organization level through primary care collaborative efforts. The teams’ projects have included but are not limited to the following topics: the cost of inpatient care, the quality of inpatient care delivered, outpatient screening for obesity, and outpatient screening for and treatment of depression. He leads separate monthly lectures for faculty, residents and medical students on quality improvement and population health. Through his quality roles, he aims to improve the quality of outpatient pain treatment of pain and OUD, incorporating CDC and MIPS quality metrics.