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Community Health Network Reduces Medication Warnings by 250K & Increases Alert Acceptance Using FDB PatientFirst™ Solutions
Health system reduced override rates across 10 medication alerts from 92% to 76% in one year
SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO, May 5, 2023 – FDB (First Databank, Inc.), the leading provider of drug knowledge that helps healthcare professionals make precise decisions, announced today that Community Health Network (Community) is seeing substantial early positive outcomes in leveraging FDB PatientFirst™ solutions to optimize medication decision support, enhance patient safety and further reduce medication clinical decision support alert (CDS) burden.
The nine-hospital health system in Central Indiana has used FDB Targeted Medication Warnings™ with FDB CDS Analytics™, an FDB PatientFirst medication decision support solution, since 2022 to identify and optimize 10 medication-related CDS alerts to make these alerts more patient-specific, relevant to the immediate clinical context, and more actionable by clinicians.
By modifying these 10 alerts in the first year, Community reduced medication alert volume by 250,000 while decreasing the rate at which clinicians override such alerts from 92% to 76%. The reductions in the override rate across the optimized alerts coincided with an increased acceptance of these medication alerts, resulting in more than 200,000 potentially harmful medications being avoided.
Community is a growing, non-profit, integrated delivery network with more than 200 sites of care throughout its region including surgery centers, home care services, MedChecks, behavioral health, and employer health services. As Community grew, the number of CDS alerts fired also expanded to where clinicians received more than 2.5 million messages per month across the health system—on average approximately nine alerts per patient encounter. This included both best practice alerts (BPAs) and medication alerts.
Last year, medication warnings began to represent the bulk, or 56%, of Community’s total number of CDS alerts, and the override rate for medication-related alerts in the inpatient settings reached nearly 94%. Additionally, providers were frustrated by the near-constant lack of relevant guidance within the warnings. To tackle this now more pressing alert challenge, Community extended its alert optimization initiative to include medication alerts and partnered with FDB to deploy FDB Targeted Medication Warnings with FDB CDS Analytics to help make these alerts more patient-specific and actionable.
“Clinical decision support is crucial for protecting patients’ safety and improving care quality, but paradoxically, it can negatively impact both of these imperatives when providers are inundated with guidance that is irrelevant to the patient or non-actionable,” said Patrick McGill, MD, executive vice president and chief transformation officer at Community. “FDB PatientFirst solutions have helped us reduce the volume of medication-related alerts—now our most common type at Community—and improve the provider experience by offering more targeted guidance that can be followed at the time the alert is presented. Those improvements translate to safer and more effective care delivery.”
Kate Rothenberg, MSN, RN, clinical decision support manager at Community, led the medication CDS alert optimization initiative with McGill.
“Health systems looking to enhance the clinical and economic value of CDS at their organizations should explore how to better tailor messages based on clinical and patient-specific context,” Rothenberg said. “Fortunately, as we have learned at Community, optimizing CDS becomes easier the more it is conducted and the benefits multiply exponentially. We have just scratched the surface with optimizing our medication-related alerts and look forward to more improvements in the coming years with the supportive guidance of FDB PatientFirst solutions.”
Using Data to Drive Change
Community’s medication CDS alert optimization journey also included forming a multicommittee governance structure focused on the practice area, which never existed before. Nor did the health system have a data-driven process to review alerts to determine if they were effective, or if they could be modified or eliminated.
Community’s newly re-chartered medication alert governance committee (MAGC) also used FDB AlertSpace® analytics and CDS Analytics within FDB Targeted Medication Warnings to immediately visualize how medication-related CDS is being used across the system, across departments, and by individual clinicians, showing how providers are interacting with or dismissing alerts. At a glance, for example, reviewers could see how traditional hyperkalemia drug-drug interaction alerts were nearly universally overridden. By leveraging FDB Targeted Medication Warnings, they only fire based on the most recent lab value threshold. Community reduced this alert frequency by 56%. Similarly, the number of QT prolongation alerts presented to clinicians was decreased by 47%.
By first considering information specific to each patient, such as lab values and clinical risk scores, within the context of the current patient engagement, FDB Targeted Medication Warnings help clinical leaders ensure that only the most relevant medication alerts are presented to providers at the point of care and that the most pertinent information for each patient is elevated. This guidance reduces alert fatigue and helps caregivers take more meaningful action at the right moment in their workflow.
“It is inspiring to see how Community Health Network is already experiencing substantial clinical and financial benefits from FDB PatientFirst Solutions, particularly reducing the volume of medication-related alerts and warnings to address clinician alert fatigue,” said Bob Katter, president of FDB. “Community’s challenge is so common in the industry as providers are inundated with more data and evidence each year. Fortunately, FDB PatientFirst solutions can help clinicians better prioritize that information to make the right medication decisions for their patients.”
About FDB
FDB (First Databank) creates and delivers the world’s most powerful drug knowledge that ignites, inspires, and illuminates critical medication decisions. We collaborate with our partners to help improve patient safety, operational efficiency, and health outcomes. Our drug databases drive healthcare information systems that serve the majority of hospitals, physician practices, pharmacies, payers, and all other areas of healthcare and are used by millions of clinicians, business associates, and patients every day. Please visit us at https://www.fdbhealth.com/, or follow us on Twitter, LinkedIn, and YouTube.
About Hearst Health
The mission of Hearst Health is to help guide the most important care moments by delivering vital information into the hands of everyone who touches a person’s health journey. Care guidance from Hearst Health reaches the majority of people in the U.S. The Hearst Health network includes FDB (First Databank), Zynx Health, MCG, Homecare Homebase, and MHK. Hearst also holds a minority interest in the precision medicine and oncology analytics company M2Gen. Follow Hearst Health on Twitter @HearstHealth or LinkedIn @Hearst-Health.
About Community Health Network
Headquartered in Indianapolis, Community Health Network has been deeply committed to the communities it serves since opening its first hospital, Community Hospital East, in 1956. Community Health Network puts patients first while offering a full continuum of healthcare services, world-class innovations, and a new focus on population health management. Exceptional care, simply delivered, is what sets Community Health Network apart and what makes it a leading not-for-profit healthcare destination in central Indiana. For more information about Community Health Network, please visit eCommunity.com.Contacts:
Tara Stultz
Amendola Communications for FDBM: 440-225-9595
[email protected]Posted 5.4.2023 -
Lumeon Named ‘Best Care Orchestration Platform’ by 2023 MedTech Breakthrough Awards
Care orchestration pioneer lauded for its advanced automation that delivers efficiency gains, reduced costs, and better patient care outcomes
BOSTON, May 3, 2023 /PRNewswire/ — Lumeon, the pioneering care orchestration solution provider, today announced that it won the new category of Best Care Orchestration Platform in the 2023 MedTech Breakthrough Awards, an independent market intelligence organization that recognizes the top companies, technologies, and products in the global health and medical technology market.
Steeped in the belief that care better orchestrated is care better delivered, the Lumeon care orchestration platform enables automation best practices that unburden clinicians and staff who are overworked and suffering from burnout, reduce costs, and recapture lost revenue – all while delivering care more efficiently.
“We are honored to be recognized as a MedTech Breakthrough winner, acknowledging our pioneering work to employ automation to help solve workforce challenges and urgent needs for health systems to reduce costs,” said Greg Miller, chief growth officer of Lumeon. “While automation has often been met with fear in healthcare, it’s now being recognized for its ability to address the challenges facing our industry. Doing things the way we have done historically – throwing more money and people at the problems – isn’t working. This award reflects the success our customers are having with the Lumeon care orchestration platform and demonstrates that the industry is finally ready to embrace new approaches that are already making a difference for care teams and their patients.”
Lumeon’s care orchestration platform automates manual tasks, activities, workflow and events, and operationalizes clinical best practices, freeing up clinicians to focus on what attracted them to the profession in the first place – caring for patients. The platform integrates real-time data, from EHRs and other disparate sources of data, then applies deep clinical knowledge and intelligent automation to orchestrate care based on the individual needs of each patient, removing manual care coordination tasks from clinicians and staff.
The platform is currently used by 65 major hospitals and health systems across the U.S. and Europe. One Lumeon customer experienced a 66% increase in care team capacity, critical in the face of persistent staffing shortages. Another large health system documented a reduction in the amount of time a clinician spends charting from 11 minutes to two minutes per case, an 83% reduction. Ultimately, Lumeon customers typically achieve cost reductions of 20% per case.
The MedTech Breakthrough Awards focus on the mission to honor excellence and recognize the innovation, hard work, and success in a range of health and medical technology categories, including Care Orchestration, Telehealth, Clinical Administration, Patient Engagement, Electronic Health Records (EHR), Virtual Care, Medical Devices, Medical Data, and many more.
About Lumeon
Lumeon believes that care better coordinated is care better delivered. Lumeon is a digital health company that provides a cloud-based care orchestration platform that automates the tasks, workflow, activities, and events that occur during the process of coordinating care. With real-time, bi-directional data/system integration and the dynamic application of clinical intelligence and automation, Lumeon ensures that each patient receives the right care at the right time – every time. By automating care coordination, care teams deliver care faster, more efficiently, effectively, and consistently across the continuum of care, while also empowering clinicians and staff to work at the tops of their licenses and spend time with patients that need it most.
About MedTech Breakthrough
Part of Tech Breakthrough, a leading market intelligence and recognition platform for global technology innovation and leadership, the MedTech Breakthrough Awards program is devoted to honoring excellence and innovation in medical & health technology companies, products, services and people. The MedTech Breakthrough Awards provide a platform for public recognition around the achievements of breakthrough healthcare and medical companies and products in categories that include Patient Experience & Engagement, Health & Fitness, Medical Devices, Clinical Administration, Connected Healthcare, Medical Data, Healthcare Cybersecurity and more. For more information visit MedTechBreakthrough.com.CONTACT: Philip Anast, Amendola (for Lumeon), 312-576-6990, [email protected];
SOURCE Lumeon
Posted 5.4.2023 -
DrFirst Named ‘Best Overall Medical Data Solution Provider’ by MedTech Breakthrough
Award Recognizes AI-Powered SmartRenewal as Outstanding Health and Medical Technology Solution
ROCKVILLE, Md., May 3, 2023 – MedTech Breakthrough today named DrFirst “Best Overall Medical Data Solution Provider” in the organization’s annual awards program honoring the top companies, technologies, and products in the global health and medical technology market. The award recognizes medication management solution SmartRenewal for its use of artificial intelligence (AI) to make prescription renewals more efficient for healthcare providers and safer for patients. This is the fourth MedTech Breakthrough award for health technology pioneer DrFirst.
Renewing a prescription involves exchanging medication data between different systems that don’t speak the same language, resulting in missing or unusable information that requires manual data entry by staff. SmartRenewal uses DrFirst’s patented AI technology to automate the transcription of medication instructions (known as “sigs”) from a pharmacy’s system into the terminology used by providers’ electronic health record (EHR) systems, significantly cutting down on the manual clicks and keystrokes that can lead to medication errors and contribute to provider burnout.
“SmartRenewal illustrates how healthcare can use AI for what it does best: increase safety and relieve people from tedious, repetitive, and time-consuming tasks,” said G. Cameron Deemer, CEO of DrFirst. “We appreciate that MedTech Breakthrough recognizes the tremendous efficiency and safety improvements SmartRenewal makes by cleaning and structuring medication data based on clinical context.”
This year, MedTech Breakthrough received more than 4,200 nominations from 17 countries. In 2022, the organization awarded DrFirst’s MedHx Companion “Best Computerized Decision Support Solution;” in 2021, SmartSuite won the “AI Innovation Award;” and in 2020, iPrescribe was recognized as “Best New E-Prescribing Solution.”
“Effective and efficient healthcare is dependent on the accurate creation and sharing of information. Inaccurate data can harm patients and create unnecessary work for clinicians, pharmacists, and staff,” said James Johnson, managing director of MedTech Breakthrough. “DrFirst is breaking through the crowded MedTech market by facilitating more efficient workflows for clinicians, reducing opportunities for medication errors, and enabling safe and fast prescription renewals for patients.”
SmartRenewal is part of DrFirst’s SmartSuite of AI solutions, which has been improving the quality of medication records since 2015 and now processes an average of 15 million records per day. SmartRenewal’s AI improves its performance over time by learning to translate, structure, and codify medication data with greater speed and efficiency. SmartRenewal is Surescripts certified for prescription renewals.
About DrFirst
Since 2000, healthcare IT pioneer DrFirst has empowered providers and patients to achieve better health through intelligent medication management. We improve healthcare efficiency and effectiveness by enhancing e-prescribing workflows, improving medication history, optimizing clinical data usability, and helping patients start and stay on therapy. In the last few years, DrFirst has won over 25 awards for excellence and innovation, including winning Gold in the prestigious Edison Awards in 2023, recognizing our game-changing use of AI to streamline time-consuming healthcare workflows and prevent medication errors. Our solutions are used by more than 260,000 prescribers, 71,000 pharmacies, 300 EHRs and health information systems, and 2,000 hospitals in the U.S. and Canada. To learn more, visit DrFirst.com and follow @DrFirst.\About MedTech Breakthrough
Part of Tech Breakthrough, a leading market intelligence and recognition platform for global technology innovation and leadership, the MedTech Breakthrough Awards program is devoted to honoring excellence and innovation in medical & health technology companies, products, services and people. The MedTech Breakthrough Awards provide a platform for public recognition around the achievements of breakthrough healthcare and medical companies and products in categories that include Patient Experience & Engagement, Health & Fitness, Medical Devices, Clinical Administration, Connected Healthcare, Medical Data, Healthcare Cybersecurity and more. For more information visit MedTechBreakthrough.com.###
DrFirst Media Contact
Katlyn Nesvold
Amendola Communications
715-559-0046
[email protected]Posted 5.4.2023