eClinicalWorks recently released a new EHR-integrated health IT tool designed to assess a patient’s risk for opioid misuse.
eClinicalWorks recently launched a new EHR-integrated Opioid Risk Tool designed to assess a patient’s risk for opioid misuse and enable providers to address potential cases of substance use disorder in accordance with treatment protocols.
In 2016, more than 11.5 million Americans aged 12 and older reported misusing prescription opioids in some capacity. eClinicalWork’s newest EHR integrated health IT tool may help to combat the growing opioid crisis and promote safer prescribing practices among users.
“The opioid epidemic is a problem of significant proportions that is only getting worse,” said eClinicalWorks CEO and cofounder Girish Navani. “At eClinicalWorks, we have a joint responsibility with healthcare providers towards developing solutions to improve patient care.”
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The Massachusetts-based EHR vendor developed ORT to reduce patient harm and deaths partly caused by overprescribing. The health IT tool includes a clinical decision support system that estimates a patient’s risk for opioid misuse and offers prescribers suggestions for potential prescribing alternatives besides opioids or opioid antagonists.
ORT also includes a tool designed to calculate the morphine milliequivalents for patients. The tool alerts providers when a prescription exceeds the CDC-recommended opioid dose.
Patients who receive opioid prescriptions will also receive educational notifications with drug information and instructions for safe opioid storage and disposal. This information will help to promote adherence to treatment protocols and boost the safety of prescribing of controlled substances.
“The Opioid Risk Tool will assist in combating the opioid epidemic, ensuring patients have access to safer treatment for chronic pain and reduce the misuse of these drugs,” said Navani. “We can do our part to limit the number of pills in circulation and believe the ORT will lead to progress in providing better and safer medicine across the nation.”
eClinicalWorks has also partnered with Appriss Health to enable an EHR-integrated Prescription Drug Monitoring Program link that allows physicians to easily access state PDMPs at the point of care directly through their EHR systems.
The partnership streamlines PDMP data access for providers to ensure prescribers can access critical prescription data without augmenting administrative burden to combat opioid overprescribing.
Without one-click access to EHR-integrated PDMP links, healthcare providers can spend up to seven minutes per patient querying the databases during office visits, according to an August 2018 JAMA Surgery study by researchers at Dartmouth-Hitchcock Medical Center.
Thirty-five state PDMPs are currently integrated into provider EHR systems through Appriss Health connections.
eClinicalWorks’ ORT tool further enhances PDMP data access for providers to enable care teams to identify potential instances of opioid misuse earlier and start intervention and treatment efforts as soon as possible. Promoting safe prescribing practices and streamlining opioid misuse treatment can help to improve patient health outcomes.
ORT was developed based on extensive research and the CDC Guidelines for Prescribing Opioids for Chronic Pain.
eClinicalWorks is the latest EHR vendor to add health IT tools to its suite of offerings specifically tailored to address problems with opioid overprescribing.
Earlier this month, Allscripts announced its own partnership with Appriss Health to allow users to access PDMP information at the point of care.
Integrating Patient prescription data into providers’ clinical workflows eliminates the need for providers to log into each state’s PDMP website separately and helps to boost clinical efficiency for providers.
“We are pleased to work with forward-thinking health care IT partners such as Allscripts on this very important integration initiative,” said Appriss Health President Rob Cohen.
“Our PMP Gateway platform is now live in healthcare entities in 35 states and processes more than 20 million transactions per month in partnership with our 90-plus EHR and pharmacy management systems vendors,” Cohen continued.
Arizona, Kansas, Indiana, Massachusetts, Michigan, Ohio, Pennsylvania, Virginia, and West Virginia are among the states that currently enable statewide adoption of EHR-integrated PDMP connections through Appriss Health.
Date: October 29, 2018
Source: EHR Intelligence