MARSHFIELD, Wis. (WSAU) — Technology is making it easier to both care for patients and keep a closer watch on prescription pain drug use. Marshfield Clinic’s electronic records unit, MCIS Inc., teamed up with Appriss, Inc., to include opiate prescription histories that are incorporated directly into a patient’s electronic health records.
Dr. Eric Penniman is Marshfield Clinic’s Medical Director for Primary Care. He says the Appriss features inside of their patient records makes it very easy to see who is getting what prescriptions before making treatment decisions and giving out new prescriptions. “Three months ago, Marshfield Clinic invested with another company to embed that information by pushing one button right in our electronic records, in the part that is actually prescribing the drugs, and so if I want to check on my patients, I push that button, and literally within seconds, the entire list of recent prescriptions and who prescribed them, and which pharmacy they picked them up comes up.”
Dr. Penniman says the system is fast, easy, and helps every patient stay on their care plan. He says it’s real-time monitoring happening at the point of care. “What it allows us to do is to ultimately, trust our patients more who are following the rules. On the other hand, it also allows to identify patients who are starting to have a problem with potentially, medicine that they may be abusing (or) sometimes selling.”
The Marshfield Clinic electronic records prescription tracking features began as a pilot program through the State of Wisconsin, to create a working model for other medical groups. “We got state grant funding to work with them to try to embed this, so that way, we could hopefully model this and demonstrate for other health records in other health systems that this is a really worthwhile investment that will improve the quality of care.”
Penniman says for those occasional patients that might be hooked on opiate painkillers, or may be illegally providing them to others, this new system helps doctors quickly see suspicious trends so they can ask patients the right questions. “Be being able to pull up the data, you can see patients who are beginning to potentially fall in the wrong direction.”
If a patient is showing signs of a drug problem, Penniman says the new prescription tracking features can help doctors catch it sooner and perhaps prevent a more serious addiction problem from developing. “As soon as they start to waiver, this tool is so easy to do that we’ll pick up on abuses early on, and it can really help avoid the more major problems.”
Opioid overdose is a health concern in Wisconsin as heroin and prescription painkiller use puts people at risk of opioid overdose. The Wisconsin Department of Health Services says that in 2013, more Wisconsin residents died from drug overdoses than motor vehicle accidents, suicide or firearms.
The other advantage for patients is noticed when it comes time to deal with an emergency. Dr. Penniman says in the Marshfield Clinic service region, emergency physicians can also get this data in a hurry. “If a patient who sees a Marshfield Clinic doctor in Wausau ends up at Aspirus Wausau Hospital, we have the Marshfield Clinic electronic records available for the emergency room docs if they want to pull it up and see exactly what’s been going on. If they end up at St. Clare’s Hospital, they actually have the same electronic records as us, so we try to make sure our regional hospitals have all of the information available so that we can have good continuity of care.”
MCIS has been working to develop and implement electronic health records for thirty years, and is the first ambulatory vendor in Wisconsin to integrate the Prescription Drug Monitoring Program into its patient records.
(Listen to our interview with Dr. Eric Penniman on our website, here.)
