As movement toward an Electronic Health Record (EHR)
continues to proliferate, enhancements of this increasingly all-encompassing
technology are now beginning to pop up.
While it’s often touted (and hotly-debated) that the presence of EHR
will improve patient outcomes, the concept of extracting clinical data from one
source (the EHR) in order to improve workflow or add convenience is finally
making an impact. I make a habit of discussing with my clients how powerful and convenient it can be for
physicians when clinical applications and unified communications systems are
tightly integrated - but how about patients? How can the same core fundamentals be used to drive patient engagement? If we consider how and when a patient actually comes into
contact with his or her patient data without a clinician serving as
intermediary, the scope narrows quickly.
The most common instance is medication and prescription management. It is quite amazing that many physicians
still scribble a prescription onto a small pad, which the patient then couriers
to the pharmacy for fulfillment.
Thankfully, however, a Meaningful Use requirement of the use of
e-prescription has curtailed this behavior to a point where most pharmacies offer an electronic methodology of receiving and filling prescriptions.
But what happens once the medication runs out, and a refill is needed - or worse (and as common) never gets filled to begin with? The patient is now in charge of the health process. This presents both a challenge and opportunity for care providers. More and more organizations are leveraging this nexus of patient, provider, and medicine to improve outcomes through technology. By integrating on-line or call center applications with the EHR, strategies can be developed to drive medication adherence and offer counsel on drug efficacy and reactions.
With the advent of the Accountable Care Organization (ACO), and in turn a renewed focus on outcome over encounter, providers are looking hard at the impact the pharmacy has on health. In fact, with one third of US hospitals now managing their own in-house pharmacies, ACO team members can ensure that patients being discharged leave with their meds, and can check on adherence via data analytics platforms that interface with the EHR’s pharmacy application and call center reports. By categorizing high-risk patients, follow-up calls utilizing the same can be performed to consult adherence, side effects, and overall efficacy.
A recent success story of this comes from Hennepin County Medical Center helped cut admissions by 42 percent, ED visits by 37% and saved an average of $2,500 through such a program such a program.
With the advent of the Accountable Care Organization (ACO), and in turn a renewed focus on outcome over encounter, providers are looking hard at the impact the pharmacy has on health. In fact, with one third of US hospitals now managing their own in-house pharmacies, ACO team members can ensure that patients being discharged leave with their meds, and can check on adherence via data analytics platforms that interface with the EHR’s pharmacy application and call center reports. By categorizing high-risk patients, follow-up calls utilizing the same can be performed to consult adherence, side effects, and overall efficacy.
A recent success story of this comes from Hennepin County Medical Center helped cut admissions by 42 percent, ED visits by 37% and saved an average of $2,500 through such a program such a program.
Looking toward the future, it is easy to see that something as simple as refilling a prescription over the phone can easily turn into something far greater. Imagine what can happen next. Perhaps it’s an ad hoc video consult between the care team pharmacist and a patient experiencing a minor side effect with their medication. Or maybe it’s pulling up a recent prescription from an on-the-move ambulance while consulting with a Neurologist and potential stroke victim. Regardless of the use case, the more we integrate, the more significant the impact technology can have before, during or after the point of care. Remember, Accountable Care is about enhancing the provider/caregiver experience to improve population health. What better way is there than to take inherently disparate interactions of a clinician interacting with a data system, and a patient interacting with a data system, and have them all integrate, nay collaborate, together?
