Care Coordination
One of the meaningful use requirements is for providers to create a clinical summary for patients for each visit that lists problems, medications, and diagnostic test results. These summaries are helpful to remind you of the details about your treatment plan as well as any needed diagnostic tests or follow-up appointments. The provider may print the clinical summary at the end of your visit, make it available electronically through a patient portal, or make all notes available through a program like OpenNotes.
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Check out the video to learn more about OpenNotes and how you can make better decisions about your health, have more meaningful discussions about your child's illnesses, or take better care of aging parents by accessing and reviewing visit notes from your EHR.
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The clinical information documented within your EHR shows your medical history over time and give providers a more comprehensive view to make the best clinical decisions for your medical treatment. Watch the first video below to see what a difference having access to medical information within an EHR can make when a patient arrives in the emergency room unresponsive and is unable to answer questions. Watch the second video below to see how urgent care providers use EHRs to make better informed decisions when treating patients.
Virtual Care
Unless it is a true emergency, there are several alternative ways to get medical care for common illnesses other than a trip to the ER. While an urgent care visit may be a more cost effective alternative than going to the ER, you may still have a long wait before seeing a healthcare provider face-to-face.
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Nurse Advice Lines
Many health insurance plans offer free access to a 24-hour nurse line to discuss your symptoms and receive advice on treatment options. Depending on the severity of the symptoms, they may connect you to a physician who can prescribe medication over the phone or they may direct you to go to an urgent care or emergency room.
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Virtual Doctor Visits
For common conditions, like earaches, fever, and sore throats, telehealth offers a convenient way to access medical care right from your home through a smartphone app, like Doctor on Demand. Most insurance plans cover telehealth or have a co-pay comparable to the cost of a PCP visit. And while the appointment wait time for seeing a provider face-to-face could be days or weeks, the wait time for a virtual visit is usually a few minutes. During a telehealth visit, the provider will document your symptoms, make a diagnosis, discuss a treatment plan, and if needed, prescribe medication with the prescription sent directly to your preferred pharmacy. After the visit, you can electronically access the clinical notes, so you have a record of the visit and treatment plan.
Advanced applications and adapters, like those offered by TytoCare, allow a provider to conduct a thorough virtual exam. The adapters take vitals for temperature, heart rate, abdominal sounds, and lung functions, but also allow for a detailed view of the ears and throat, with results appearing instantly for the provider to make a diagnosis. This video shows how a virtual exam can be conducted using the TytoCare app and adapters.
Medications & Adherence
Providers use EHRs to help determine the most appropriate medication for treatment that does not counteract any of your other medications. It is important to discuss any medications, including over-the-counter and daily supplements, you are taking so your provider can document them in your EHR, to ensure your own safety and to minimize complications. Your provider should also document any medication allergies or sensitivities in your EHR.
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When prescribed a new medication, it is important that you understand what the medicine is for, how long you need to take it, benefits, and potential risks. If you decide to explore an alternative option in leu of medication, your provider should document the new treatment plan and outcome goals in your EHR to monitor the effectiveness of your decision and prevent further complications.
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Providers can use EHRs to rapidly search thousands of medication records for generic or alternative options to find the best option for you. Providers can also use their EHR to send prescriptions directly to your preferred pharmacy, saving you a trip.
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Check out the video for an example of how providers use EHRs to check for and prevent drug interactions.
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Sometimes staying healthy is as easy as taking the medications your body needs, but it is also easy to forget. Thankfully, there are lots of tools that can help you stay organized when it comes to prescriptions and medications. Organizing medications using pill boxes is useful for people who take multiple pills daily or even multiple times each day. These pill boxes range from basic plastic strips with one or two compartments for each day to sophisticated pill boxes with multiple configurable medication-specific alarms. Alarm pill boxes can be especially helpful for older adults who have memory issues or who need to take multiple medications at different times of the day. In addition to the alarm sound, some of these pill boxes also have lights to indicate which medication to take to reduce mistakes. For those with a smartphone, a medication reminder app, like the free app from Medisafe, is a straightforward way you can manage multiple medications for multiple people all in one place. The app has both reminders to take the medication as well as when it is time to order a refill. There are also warnings for drug interactions as well as family scheduling, which can be set up to notify a caregiver if someone accidently misses their medication. Major pharmacy chains and providers also offer smartphone apps that include prescription reminders and refill functionality.
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Healthline. (2016, March 18). The 5 Best Reminders for Your Medications. Retrieved from https://www.healthline.com/health/best-medication-reminders#1.-Medisafe-Medication-Reminder
Kebodeaux, C. (2019, March). Prescription and over-the-counter medication record integration: A holistic patient-centered approach. Journal of the American Pharmacists Association. Retrieved from https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S1544319118304138
The Caring Home. (n.d.). 7 Best Pill Boxes with Alarms. Retrieved from https://www.thiscaringhome.org/expert-review-pill-boxes-with-alarms/
Hospital at Home
A ground-breaking model of delivering acute care is the Hospital at Home® program, which provides hospital-level care to older adults, while allowing them to stay in their home. While at home, the patient receives home visits at least daily by healthcare providers and/or nurses, who are also available 24/7 in the event of an emergency. Good candidates for the Hospital at Home® program are older patients who need hospital-level care, but whose condition is at minimal risk of clinical deterioration with care, like congestive heart failure, emphysema, dehydration, and cellulitis. Compared to traditional acute hospital stays, this program has demonstrated higher patient satisfaction, lower mortality rates, reduced complications, better health outcomes, and an average cost savings of 20-30%.
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Check out the videos below to learn more about how virtual hospitals and the Hospital at Home® program works.
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