Health systems and their vendor partners continue to look for ways that IT systems can help clinicians and administrators address the opioid crisis.
For instance, NewYork-Presbyterian is working to create an enhanced controlled substance monitoring platform, seeking to prevent the potential diversion of controlled substances, including opioids. In another recent announcement, DrFirst, a provider of e-prescribing and patient medication management solutions, has worked with the Meditech EHR to seamlessly connect prescribers to California’s Prescription Drug Monitoring Program (PDMP).
NewYork-Presbyterian, an integrated academic healthcare delivery system, already had a relationship with Splunk Inc., a San Francisco-based company that produces software for searching, monitoring and analyzing machine-generated big data. It uses Splunk solutions to monitor IT security operations. Recognizing that the same principles could be used to build a platform to more closely safeguard controlled substances and other medications, NewYork-Presbyterian approached Splunk to develop the controlled substance monitoring platform, because of its products’ ability to synthesize a variety of data from hundreds of clinical applications, systems and data sources.
The enhanced Splunk controlled substance monitoring platform, which will be implemented in the second quarter of 2019, will enable NewYork-Presbyterian to track data from electronic health records (EHRs), electronic prescription of controlled substances (EPCS) platforms, pharmacy dispensing systems and other sources. With the system, NewYork-Presbyterian will be able to see if drugs are being diverted for potentially illegitimate purposes.
For example, the Splunk platform will immediately alert NewYork-Presbyterian if a physician were to prescribe a controlled substance to a patient not currently in the care of the hospital, or if a pharmacy technician were to use an automated dispensary cabinet more often than his or her peers. In addition, the platform will be used to safeguard against the diversion of other high-cost medications, such as certain anti-cancer drugs that can be priced at tens of thousands of dollars per month.
“At a time when overdose deaths are at crisis levels across the country and in New York City, largely due to the opioid epidemic, healthcare providers have a responsibility to safeguard against any potential diversion of drugs,” said Jennings Aske, senior vice president and chief information security officer at NewYork-Presbyterian, in a statement. “NewYork-Presbyterian is taking a leading role in protecting the public by implementing highly effective controls to avoid the illegitimate use of controlled substances. Ultimately, we hope that other hospitals benefit from this new platform as well.”
NewYork-Presbyterian and Splunk said they also are developing an enhanced data analytics tool to expand proactive security measures to protect patient privacy and investigate unauthorized access to electronic patient records from internal and external sources. In addition to safeguards already in place, the enhanced privacy platform will add new ones, including the ability to issue alerts in real time if someone were to inappropriately view patient records.
DrFirst said the tighter integration with Meditech is critical because it gives clinicians streamlined, real-time access to essential opioid prescription information for individual patients at the point-of-care. Prescribers using DrFirst’s e-prescribing tools within the Meditech EHR can quickly check the PDMP database to view their patients’ opioid prescription history, allowing them to quickly identify patients who may have substance abuse disorders and are “doctor shopping” for prescriptions of controlled substances. Prescribers do not need to log into the PDMP from a separate browser because patient queries are initiated from within the e-prescribing workflow. Prescription records are returned directly within the EHR automatically once physician credentials are validated in the state’s PDMP.
