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Standard Register Offers Secure Access to Critical Patient Medication History Information for Authorized Hospitals
Thursday 26. February 2009 - Standard Register's Rx History Capture Solution Completes SureScripts-RxHub Certification
Standard Register (NYSE:SR), a leading provider of document workflow and automation services for healthcare, announced that its new Rx History Capture solution has completed certification with SureScripts-RxHub.
Designed to help hospitals enhance patient safety and reduce adverse drug events, Rx History Capture gathers prescription data from pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) and retail pharmacies via the SureScripts-RxHub network and combines it with data from a hospitals information systems to provide authorized clinicians with a valuable tool for validating patient medication histories.
“The medication history is often one of the weakest links in the medication reconciliation process,” said John P. Parmley, manager of healthcare risk management programs for Standard Registers Healthcare Business. “When patients enter the hospital, they are frequently stressed. They may not remember all of the medications that have been prescribed for their various conditions, the specific names or the doses, particularly if they have been seeing multiple providers. As a result, new therapies can be prescribed that create a range of potentially life-threatening adverse events,” he explained.
A study released by the Brigham and Womens Hospital and published in the Journal of General Internal Medicine (September 2008) reported that 72 percent of potentially harmful medication discrepancies are due to errors in taking patient medication histories.
With consent from the patient, Rx History Captures uses the SureScripts-RxHub network to query pharmacy benefit managers and retail pharmacies for patient medication history information as part of the admission process or on demand in an inpatient, outpatient or emergency setting. Rx History Capture can combine this real-time information with data from the patients last visit to generate an “as-filled” list of medications which can be made available electronically to authorized staff or output to the hospitals medication history or reconciliation form.
SureScripts-Rx Hub has certified that Rx History Capture follows strict security protocols to align with HIPAA requirements and respect patient privacy. All queries and responses are made automatically through secure system-to-system communications. When the query is made, it is transparent to the requestor. Role-based security determines which personnel have access to the patient information.
“With critical, real-time patient medication history from retail pharmacies and PBMs, and the data our application draws from hospital information systems, we have the opportunity to significantly reduce the risk of ADEs,” Parmley said. “Rx History Capture provides the foundational tool to help hospitals standardize their medication reconciliation processes and improve patient outcomes.”