Health IT, Hospitals

DrFirst helps St. Luke’s Cornwall Hospital, Oswego Health improve provider collaboration

Through DrFirst's new Connected Care Communities initiative, providers can exchange patient medication information and facilitate referrals without having to use the same EHR software.

DrFirst, a vendor focused on e-prescribing and clinical data sharing, has launched Connected Care Communities, a service that assists healthcare providers in better collaborating with each other and with their patients.

Currently, two systems are taking part in the initiative: St. Luke’s Cornwall Hospital in Newburgh, New York, and Oswego Health, headquartered in upstate central New York.

Through Connected Care Communities, doctors, pharmacists and nurses within each system can communicate. This means providers across facilities within each network can exchange patient medication history information and facilitate referrals, among other capabilities. They can do so without having to use the same EHR software. In addition to enabling providers to better communicate, the tools allow doctors to contact their patients directly.

For clarification, the DrFirst initiative is applicable to each system separately. In other words, St. Luke’s is not working with Oswego Health in any way.

“From a clinical perspective, there’s no overlap whatsoever,” St. Luke’s CMO Dr. Gina Del Savio said in a phone interview.

Connected Care Communities is made possible through DrFirst’s Backline software and iPrescribe medication management software. The tools are available for desktop and mobile devices.

“Everybody recognizes that communication has changed,” Del Savio said. “What’s the common device? It’s our cell phones. Everybody pretty much has one, including your patients.”

DrFirst leveraged these changing communication tools to meet the needs of providers, she added.

Oftentimes, patient information — like medications and being transferred to another facility — gets lost in the mix. There are time lags as the data transfers from one provider to another. With the capabilities of Connected Care Communities, all relevant information can be communicated in real time without violating HIPAA.

The network not only makes care coordination easier for providers, but it also aids patients. The patient should see “more of an appearance of seamless care delivery,” Del Savio said. The abilities can also be leveraged for patient education purposes and to ensure consumers that their providers are working with each other.

And as Del Savio noted, St. Luke’s Cornwall Hospital provides care to an underserved community, which perhaps needs this type of service all the more.

“It’s so amazing that here we are as a community hospital and we can still leverage these tools,” she said.

Looking forward, Del Savio said Connected Care Communities can have a large impact on healthcare delivery. By functioning as a communication link through which actionable information can be shared among stakeholders, the service can help providers take better care of their patients.

Photo: Nasco, Getty Images

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