Surescripts Event Notification EHR Integration Targets Coordination

Surescripts has announced the launch of new health IT solutions that aim to improve patient follow up, medication adherence, and care coordination through electronic health record (EHR) event notifications.

Surescripts’ new Care Event Notifications EHR integration alerts providers of patient hospital admission, discharge, or transfer (ADT).

Additionally, an enhanced Medication History for Populations service now includes patient notifications to allow providers, including care managers, to reach out to patients experiencing gaps in care, significant care events, or medication adherence issues.

The health IT tool also offers updates for certain prescription activities. For instance, providers are alerted within their EHR system if a patient does not pick up their prescription, if no refills remain, or if a different provider prescribes a new medication to the patient.

Together, these solutions aim to give clinicians greater insight into major care events for more proactive follow-up and enhanced care coordination.

"Healthcare interoperability alone isn't enough,” Mike Pritts, chief product officer of Surescripts, said in a public statement. “Clinical intelligence that is accurate, timely, and actionable is the next step in our journey for closing costly gaps in care.”

"With these new solutions, care management teams and healthcare organizations can build better and more efficient care management programs that drive better health outcomes,” Pritts continued.

The event notification EHR integration gives providers access to the most up-to-date patient health information directly within their EHR workflow. Instead of waiting until a patient schedules an appointment or presents at the clinic to learn about recent care events, providers can reach out to a patient for follow-up.

"Visibility into patients' prior care events and medication history helps care teams effectively coordinate care and improve health outcomes," explained Andrew Mellin, MD, chief medical officer at Surescripts.

"With the clinical intelligence conveyed through these interoperability solutions, health teams can fill in information gaps and bring actionable patient intelligence into their care management workflows, so care navigators can focus on engaging patients at the right time,” Mellin continued.

As part of the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) interoperability rule, hospitals, psychiatric hospitals, and critical access hospitals (CAH) are required to send electronic ADT notifications to all applicable post-acute care providers as of May 2021.

This includes primary care practitioners and groups, as well as other practitioners and groups identified by the patient as primarily responsible for her care.

The ADT messages must include the patient's basic demographic information, the name of the sending institution and, if not prohibited by other applicable law, the patient's diagnosis.

Additionally, the final rule requires that care organizations demonstrate that their EHR system can comply with national data exchange standards and regulations. Compliance is set to advance data exchange for enhanced provider-to-provider communication and care coordination.

Health information exchanges can aid their customers in compliance with the new CMS conditions of participation by embedding their own ADT notifications structure within the HIE service.

For example, Manifest MedEx (MX), a nonprofit HIE network in California, offers real-time ADT notifications across its network of 120 hospitals, 700 ambulatory care sites, seven health plans, 13 EMS providers, and six EMS agencies.

The service also provides customers with up to seven years of searchable patient medical history to improve clinical decision support, patient care delivery, and hospital savings.

“The great thing about an infrastructure like MX is we do the heavy lifting of going to the ambulatory providers, getting their patient panels, and setting up the panel,” Claudia Williams, Manifest MedEx CEO, said in a March interview with EHRIntelligence.

“All the provider needs to do is share an ADT and we make it so the client does not have to figure it all out on their own,” Williams explained. “Then, sort of magically, when the provider shares the ADT, it gets routed to the right places.”