John Klimek, senior vice president of industry information technology at the National Council for Prescription Drug Programs, offers key insights into how hospitals can better fuse medication reconciliation with electronic medical records.
Q: As more hospitals adopt EMRs, what are some of the problems hospitals can run into when using medication reconciliation?
Mr. John Klimek: When I saw medication reconciliation emerging at hospitals, it brings to mind situations pharmacies faced years ago in dealing with patients being discharged from hospitals with all these discharge and medication papers. Pharmacists and physicians now have to sit down and try to figure out what medication patients are taking, what their new medications are now and so on. A lot of it was previously on paper, but now we're in the age of e-prescribing, which allows the payor, physician and pharmacist to pull up a patient's medication history, as opposed to having a patient walk in with a bag of bottles and medication papers. Hospitals are not there 100 percent yet. I see reports of close to 50 percent of admitted patients having the potential of experiencing adverse drug events while in the hospital, and this can be prevented with medication reconciliation and EMRs.
Q: What is the key to improving medication reconciliation through the use of EMRs?
JK: A patient may walk into a hospital with a list of three or four medications, and at that point a physician may assume that's all the patient is taking when it could be much more than that. When you're talking about senior citizen who may not have a care taker who is being admitted, you have to make sure you have a full understanding of their medication history, what they were taking before and what they are taking now, and have a complete record. You can also run into issues of not knowing what over-the-counter products patients are taking. You don't know if they are taking an aspirin or anti-histamine, which can cause problems when prescribing other medications. All these things should be included in the EMR.
Hospitals also need to understand that a patient could be seeing multiple physicians, who then give that patient other medications. I'm working on developing guidelines and standards with the Office of the National Coordinator for clinicians and pharmacists to use in improving communication to each other. We're trying to attain better interoperability between entities to prevent the type of problems we see in hospital settings.
The Office of the National Coordinator has also provided funding to some educational institutions to better prepare future graduates in handling some of the IT needs that are happening out there in healthcare industry. Physicians sometimes don't know all the medications that are being taken by a patient, so we're hoping EMRs can help prevent that from happening.
Learn more about NCPDP.
Q: As more hospitals adopt EMRs, what are some of the problems hospitals can run into when using medication reconciliation?
Mr. John Klimek: When I saw medication reconciliation emerging at hospitals, it brings to mind situations pharmacies faced years ago in dealing with patients being discharged from hospitals with all these discharge and medication papers. Pharmacists and physicians now have to sit down and try to figure out what medication patients are taking, what their new medications are now and so on. A lot of it was previously on paper, but now we're in the age of e-prescribing, which allows the payor, physician and pharmacist to pull up a patient's medication history, as opposed to having a patient walk in with a bag of bottles and medication papers. Hospitals are not there 100 percent yet. I see reports of close to 50 percent of admitted patients having the potential of experiencing adverse drug events while in the hospital, and this can be prevented with medication reconciliation and EMRs.
Q: What is the key to improving medication reconciliation through the use of EMRs?
JK: A patient may walk into a hospital with a list of three or four medications, and at that point a physician may assume that's all the patient is taking when it could be much more than that. When you're talking about senior citizen who may not have a care taker who is being admitted, you have to make sure you have a full understanding of their medication history, what they were taking before and what they are taking now, and have a complete record. You can also run into issues of not knowing what over-the-counter products patients are taking. You don't know if they are taking an aspirin or anti-histamine, which can cause problems when prescribing other medications. All these things should be included in the EMR.
Hospitals also need to understand that a patient could be seeing multiple physicians, who then give that patient other medications. I'm working on developing guidelines and standards with the Office of the National Coordinator for clinicians and pharmacists to use in improving communication to each other. We're trying to attain better interoperability between entities to prevent the type of problems we see in hospital settings.
The Office of the National Coordinator has also provided funding to some educational institutions to better prepare future graduates in handling some of the IT needs that are happening out there in healthcare industry. Physicians sometimes don't know all the medications that are being taken by a patient, so we're hoping EMRs can help prevent that from happening.
Learn more about NCPDP.