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Collaborative helps pharmacists navigate EHR arena
The importance of ensuring that pharmacist-provided clinical services are represented in the electronic health record has come to the forefront with the Pharmacy e-Health Information Technology Collaborative.
The importance of ensuring that pharmacist-provided clinical services are represented in the electronic health record (EHR) has come to the forefront with the Pharmacy e-Health Information Technology Collaborative (Collaborative), an organization founded by 9 national pharmacy organizations.
Launched in September 2010, the Collaborative's goal is to help pharmacists receive bi-directional information and functionality with electronic prescribing and other aspects of the certified EHR in order to participate in multidisciplinary patient care. In addition, the Collaborative integrates the pharmacist's role of providing patient-care services into the US Health Information Technology (HIT) infrastructure.
The Collaborative was developed to assure the meaningful use of standardized EHRs, supporting safe, efficient, and effective medication use, continuity of care, and provision of access to patient-care services by pharmacists with other members of the interdisciplinary patient-care team.
"Pharmacists providing patient-care services need a standard EHR to document and electronically exchange health information with other healthcare providers," said the Collaborative's Director Rachelle "Shelly" Spiro, RPh.
According to Dr Spiro, for pharmacists to be meaningful users of the EHR, pharmacists worked with standard development organizations to develop the Pharmacist/Pharmacy Provider EHR (PP-EHR) functional profile. The PP-EHR or Pharmacist EHR was developed by a joint Health Level Seven (HL7) and National Council for Prescription Drug Programs (NCPDP) work group and it has been approved through the balloting process of both organizations.
The Collaborative also has associate members who represent e-prescribing networks, a standards development organization, and a transaction processing network.
The Collaborative represents more than 250,000 pharmacists in different aspects of pharmacy practice, including pharmacy education, clinical pharmacy, retail pharmacy, consulting, and others, as well as the National Alliance of State Pharmacy Associations, and the National Community Pharmacists Association. The Collaborative influences HIT policy through unified, regular communication exchanges to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS), Office of the National Coordinator (ONC), and other HIT organizations about pharmacists' contributions and pharmacist-provided patient-care services to the ONC and CMS defined meaningful use of the EHR.
For more information, visit http://www.pharmacye-hit.org/.
Coalition promotes important acetaminophen dosing reminders
November 18th 2014It may come as a surprise that each year Americans catch approximately 1 billion colds, and the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention estimates that as many as 20% get the flu. This cold and flu season, 7 in 10 patients will reach for an over-the-counter (OTC) medicine to treat their coughs, stuffy noses, and sniffles. It’s an important time of the year to remind patients to double check their medicine labels so they don’t double up on medicines containing acetaminophen.
Support consumer access to specialty medications through value-based insurance design
June 30th 2014The driving force behind consumer cost-sharing provisions for specialty medications is the acquisition cost and not clinical value. This appears to be true for almost all public and private health plans, says a new report from researchers at the University of Michigan Center for Value-Based Insurance Design (V-BID Center) and the National Pharmaceutical Council (NPC).
Management of antipsychotic medication polypharmacy
June 13th 2013Within our healthcare-driven society, the increase in the identification and diagnosis of mental illnesses has led to a proportional increase in the prescribing of psychotropic medications. The prevalence of mental illnesses and subsequent treatment approaches may employ monotherapy as first-line treatment, but in many cases the use of combination of therapy can occur, leading to polypharmacy.1 Polypharmacy can be defined in several ways but it generally recognized as the use of multiple medications by one patient and the most common definition is the concurrent use of five more medications. The presence of polyharmacy has the potential to contribute to non-compliance, drug-drug interactions, medication errors, adverse events, or poor quality of life.
Medical innovation improves outcomes
June 12th 2013I have been diagnosed with stage 4 cancer of the pancreas, a disease that’s long been considered not just incurable, but almost impossible to treat-a recalcitrant disease that some practitioners feel has given oncology a bad name. I was told my life would be measured in weeks.
