– Norton Healthcare, a health system serving patients in Kentucky and southern Indiana, is now deploying Appriss Health technology to integrate its prescription drug monitoring program (PDMP) with its Epic electronic health record (EHR).
– The solutions enable Norton Healthcare providers to share PDMP information across state lines and provide advanced analytic insights to improve opioid stewardship and help identify, prevent and manage substance use disorder in patients.
– This is helping to prevent “doctor shopping” and overprescribing opioids to patients. Additionally, providers are saving up to 10 minutes on each query, as it increases the ease of access and use of PDMP information for making clinical decisions including prescribing controlled substances.
Norton Healthcare, a leader in serving patients from throughout Greater Louisville, Southern Indiana, the Commonwealth of Kentucky and beyond announced it has partnered Appriss Health, provider of the most comprehensive platform for opioid stewardship and substance use disorder. As part of the partnership, Norton will deploy Appriss Health to integrate prescription drug monitoring program (PDMP) information into prescribers’ Epic electronic health record (EHR) system, share PDMP information across state lines and provide advanced analytic insights to improve opioid stewardship and help identify, prevent and manage substance use disorder (SUD) within its patient population.
Impact of Drug Overdoses in Kentucky
According to the 2018 Overdose Fatality Report from the Kentucky Office of Drug Control Policy, 1,333 people died in Kentucky from drug overdoses in 2018. Jefferson County, which includes Louisville and also borders the state of Indiana, had the most resident overdose deaths of any county in Kentucky.
“Norton Healthcare’s mission is to provide quality health care to all those we serve in a manner that responds to the needs of our communities,” said Steven Heilman, M.D., Senior Vice President and Chief Health Innovation Officer, Norton Healthcare. “The opioid epidemic is a major concern for our region. Now, our providers have improved access to new resources to help our communities confront the opioid epidemic.”
“We are pleased to partner with Appriss Health in helping to solve the opioid problem plaguing the communities that we serve with these proven technologies,” Heilman continued. “The feedback from our providers has been overwhelmingly positive. With these new technologies we hope to progressively affect patient care and safety, and ultimately help to save and protect more patient lives in Kentucky and Indiana.”
PDMP Integration Across Kentucky & Indiana into Epic EHR
The system-wide integration of the Kentucky and Indiana PDMP platforms (named KASPER and INSPECT, respectively) — including PDMP information from other states as well, into Norton Healthcare’s Epic EHR systems at the point-of-care — increases the ease of access and use of PDMP information for making critical clinical decisions, including the prescribing of controlled substances, and helps to improve patient outcomes and safety. Prior to this integration initiative, prescribers had to log in to separate systems to query patient information, which took important time away from patient care. Norton Healthcare is now saving its providers up to 10 minutes on each KASPER query.
Deploying Appriss Health’s NarxCare Platform in Emergency Department
Norton Healthcare is also deploying Appriss Health’s NarxCare platform in its Emergency Department. NarxCare utilizes, analyzes, and presents information from state PDMPs to enable prescribers to identify and manage patients at risk for controlled substance misuse, abuse, overdose, and death. NarxCare equips clinicians with advanced analytics, tools, technology, and invaluable insights that are presented and accessed directly within Norton Healthcare’s Epic EHR system. NarxCare provides machine learning-based patient risk analysis and other information in a visually interactive format to support clinician decision-making.
Appriss Health, founded and headquartered in Louisville has been adopted across 130 EHR platforms and every national pharmacy chain across 40 states integrates physician and pharmacist workflow through Appriss Health’s PMP Gateway. 20 states have statewide integration and more than 630,000 prescribers and pharmacists at more than 92,000 facilities in the U.S. access PDMP reports with PMP Gateway. The National Association of Boards of Pharmacy’s PMP InterConnect platform currently enables the sharing of PDMP information among 51 PDMPs nationwide. Today, the PMP InterConnect network processes more than 330,000,000 interstate information request responses per month nationwide.
