WISHIN strives to be more than just a bridge from one health care provider to another. WISHIN aims to improve care for patients as well as improve on the data and services providers have at their fingertips to deliver care.
One way WISHIN does this is through a strong partnership with the state of Wisconsin that allows the inclusion of data from the Wisconsin Prescription Drug Monitoring Program (PDMP), Medicaid prescription-fill data, and immunization history and schedule information from the Wisconsin Immunization Registry (WIR).
Easy access to the PDMP through WISHIN is notable given the national and statewide importance of fighting opioid abuse. As a part of the HOPE (Heroin Opiate Prevention and Education) agenda passed in Wisconsin this year, prescribers will be required to check the PDMP before prescribing certain controlled substances beginning April 1st, 2017.
Some WISHIN clients, including Aurora Health Care, are already working to get their staff in the habit of consulting PDMP records via WISHIN's integration.
"There's no question it has had the effect of decreasing the amount of opioids we prescribe," reports Dr. Paul Coogan, President of Aurora Emergency Services. The health system's emergency rooms began using WISHIN to access PDMP data in June of 2015.
"We've told [staff] if you're going to e-prescribe, check [the PDMP], if the story doesn't seem right or patients present with altered mental status, make sure you go in there to see their prescribing history," says Dr. Coogan, "It's about patient safety. Finding out where patients have been and figuring out if what they're telling you is the truth."
As reported last month by
Wisconsin Public Radio
(WPR), while usage has increased since 2013, the PDMP hasn't been accessed by providers as widely as had been hoped. "The reason it wasn't used is I think our doctors are already very busy," chief medical officer of the Wisconsin Medical Society Donn Dexter told WPR. "It's hard to put this into the flow of their practice. And the current PDMP, I think even the people who are the biggest proponents will admit it's pretty clunky. It's not easy to use."
Dr. Coogan echoed Dexter's experience, "[The PDMP portal] was such a pain to log in and out of. There were multiple steps to logging in and then it would kick you out. We weren't using it consistently because it was too hard to use."
Integration of PDMP data into EHRs is another method lawmakers and care providers are pursuing in fighting the opioid epidemic. When implementing WISHIN, Aurora chose to pursue the single-sign-on method, which allows its providers to launch the WISHIN interface from within their Epic electronic health record system without an additional log-in to the WISHIN system.
Dr. Coogan says that feedback from providers using WISHIN for PDMP data has been positive, "they can't believe it's literally just a few clicks and no extra sign-ins," He adds that many studies have shown that narcotic prescribing decreases if PDMP data is easliy available. "You've got to make it easier for the provider to get to that service if you want them to use it."
WISHIN Pulse can be
accessed several ways including via a portal, query-and-retrieve or via single sign-on. The PDMP data is displayed in WISHIN Pulse as part of the patient's overall community health record, so that the PDMP information can be viewed in the context of information about previous encounters, diagnoses, lab results, and other data without separately signing into the PDMP system. Care providers can use the PDMP medication list to help inform medical decisions as they work with their patients and potentially spot at-risk users and help them with steps to recovery.
To learn more about accessing PDMP data via WISHIN give us a call at (608) 274-1820 or send an email to wishin@wishin.org.
