Louisville, KY, Feb. 03, 2020 (GLOBE NEWSWIRE) -- Appriss Health, provider of the most comprehensive platform for opioid stewardship and substance use disorder in the U.S., today announced that it has partnered with Norton Healthcare, a leader in serving patients from throughout Greater Louisville, Southern Indiana, the Commonwealth of Kentucky and beyond, to deploy leading technologies to integrate prescription drug monitoring program (PDMP) information into prescribers’ electronic health record (EHR) systems, share PDMP information across state lines, and provide advanced analytic insights to improve opioid stewardship and help identify, prevent, and manage substance use disorder (SUD) within its patient population.
“Norton Healthcare’s mission is to provide quality health care to all those we serve in a manner that responds to the needs of our communities,” said Steven Heilman, M.D., Senior Vice President and Chief Health Innovation Officer, Norton Healthcare. “The opioid epidemic is a major concern for our region. Now, our providers have improved access to new resources to help our communities confront the opioid epidemic.”
According to the 2018 Overdose Fatality Report from the Kentucky Office of Drug Control Policy, 1,333 people died in Kentucky from drug overdoses in 2018. Jefferson County, which includes Louisville and also borders the state of Indiana, had the most resident overdose deaths of any county in Kentucky.
“We are pleased to partner with Appriss Health in helping to solve the opioid problem plaguing the communities that we serve with these proven technologies,” Heilman continued. “The feedback from our providers has been overwhelmingly positive. With these new technologies we hope to progressively affect patient care and safety, and ultimately help to save and protect more patient lives in Kentucky and Indiana.”
Appriss Health, founded and headquartered in Louisville, is helping Norton Healthcare by deploying its PMP Gateway service to deliver PDMP information within prescribers’ EHR systems, enabling interstate PDMP information sharing via PMP InterConnect, and empowering prescribers in the emergency department to make efficient and effective clinical decisions with its NarxCare platform.
The system-wide integration of the Kentucky and Indiana PDMP platforms (named KASPER and INSPECT, respectively) — including PDMP information from other states as well, into Norton Healthcare’s Epic EHR systems at the point-of-care — increases the ease of access and use of PDMP information for making critical clinical decisions, including the prescribing of controlled substances, and helps to improve patient outcomes and safety. Prior to this integration initiative, prescribers had to log in to separate systems to query patient information, which took important time away from patient care. Norton Healthcare is now saving its providers up to 10 minutes on each KASPER query.
PDMP information, analytics, and more are now integrated into physician and pharmacist workflow through more than 130 EHR platforms and every national pharmacy chain as well as many of the independent pharmacies across 40 states via Appriss Health’s PMP Gateway solution. Twenty states have aligned with Appriss Health to sponsor state-wide adoption of PDMP integrations for all of their prescribers and/or pharmacists. In addition, more than 630,000 prescribers and pharmacists at more than 92,000 facilities in the U.S. access PDMP reports with PMP Gateway.
The National Association of Boards of Pharmacy’s PMP InterConnect platform currently enables the sharing of PDMP information among 51 PDMPs nationwide. Today, the PMP InterConnect network processes more than 330,000,000 interstate information request responses per month nationwide.
Norton Healthcare is also deploying Appriss Health’s NarxCare platform in its Emergency Department. NarxCare utilizes, analyzes, and presents information from state PDMPs to enable prescribers to identify and manage patients at risk for controlled substance misuse, abuse, overdose, and death. NarxCare equips clinicians with advanced analytics, tools, technology, and invaluable insights that are presented and accessed directly within Norton Healthcare’s Epic EHR system. NarxCare provides machine learning-based patient risk analysis and other information in a visually interactive format to support clinician decision-making.
Appriss Health is aligned with current legislative and government agency efforts to support the path forward for PDMPs and the identification, prevention, management, and treatment of SUD and behavioral health problems.
“Appriss Health is a responsible leader that has built and scaled a nationwide ecosystem of solutions, partners, government organizations, hospitals and healthcare systems, pharmacies, treatment providers, and others to help make a meaningful impact on the opioid epidemic and behavioral health today,” said Rob Cohen, President, Appriss Health. “We are particularly proud to partner with Norton Healthcare, here in the communities where we live, work, and serve in Kentucky and Indiana, as well as all across the U.S. Together, we are truly making a real difference in this ongoing and complex crisis.”
About Appriss Health
Appriss Health provides the nation's most comprehensive platform for opioid stewardship and the identification, prevention, management, and treatment of substance use and mental health disorders. We provide state government agencies with the most advanced repository of controlled substance dispensing information, facilitate rapid treatment referrals, and deliver real-time clinical decision support, critical insights, and interventions to physicians, pharmacists, social workers, and other care team members through millions of patient encounters each year. Our solutions enable healthcare providers to better assess and manage clinical risk to positively impact patient outcomes and safety all across the U.S. For more information, please visit www.apprisshealth.com and www.openbeds.net.