Yale Integrates EHR with Connecticut’s Prescription Monitoring System
Yale New Haven Health and Yale School of Medicine have launched a partnership with the State of Connecticut and Appriss Health, a Louisville, KY-based technology vendor, to use health IT tools to better identify, prevent and manage substance use disorder.
The collaboration integrates Yale’s patient electronic health record system (EHR) with the Connecticut Prescription Monitoring and Reporting System (CPMRS), a tool designed to help providers reduce prescription misuse, addiction, and overdoses. It enables Yale physicians and other prescribers to readily obtain critical information regarding opioid prescriptions and other medications so they can safely manage treatment and comply with state regulations, according to a press release.
Although Connecticut has had a valuable database of opioid and other controlled prescription information, the stand-alone system is considered cumbersome and has created barriers to clinicians’ use. Physicians have had to access separate systems with different logins, requiring a break in busy workflows.
Appriss Health reports that the collaboration with Yale New Haven Health will enable the integration of prescription drug monitoring program (PDMP) information directly into EHRs via Appriss Health’s NarxCare solution. NarxCare is an in-workflow, PDMP information, advanced analytics, tools and technology solution that aids clinical decision-making and increases access to treatment, improves patient engagement, and enables care coordination. The new integrated system allows physicians logged into Yale’s Epic EHR to quickly identify patients at high risk for adverse events and overdose.
“Our physicians throughout Yale New Haven Health will now have the critical information they need to make the best prescribing and medical decisions to improve the safety of our patients,” Allen Hsiao, M.D., chief medical information officer, and associate professor of Pediatrics and of Emergency Medicine at Yale School of Medicine.
“This partnership and integration is one strategy in our Connecticut Opioid Response (CORE) initiative to reduce deaths from opioid overdoses in the state and improve the use of the CPMRS thereby enhancing safe prescribing,” Gail D’Onofrio, M.D., chief of Emergency Services at Yale New Haven Health, chair of Yale Medicine Operations Committee, and professor and chair of Emergency Medicine at Yale School of Medicine.