SOUTH SAN FRANCISCO, Calif.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--FDB (First Databank, Inc.), the leading provider of drug and medical device knowledge that helps healthcare professionals make precise decisions, announced that Health First, a not-for-profit, community healthcare system in Central Florida, has integrated FDB’s Meducation® software with its Allscripts Sunrise electronic health record. This implementation, across all four Health First hospitals, is the first complete integration of Meducation with Sunrise, enabling Health First providers to access Meducation’s simplified patient medication instructions from within the clinical workflow. Meducation was initially trialed at Health First’s Cape Canaveral Hospital within the pharmacy department before going live across the entire hospital system.
Meducation is a cloud-based solution that is accessible to healthcare providers within their clinical workflow through integration within their EMR or pharmacy system. Meducation delivers medication instructions for individuals considered to be “high risk” due to low health literacy, poor vision or language barriers. It enables providers to dynamically create fully personalized medication patient instructions, in any of 21 languages — written at a 5th to 8th grade reading level with large font sizes, pictograms and videos — to make understanding how to take medications intuitive and simple. Meducation integrates with a variety of major information system vendors and has been licensed to hospitals, health systems, clinics and pharmacies across the US and Canada.
“Health First providers can now use Meducation without interrupting their normal workflow,” said Edye Cleary, chief quality officer, Health First. “This allows patients to have medication instructions that are clear, easy to understand, and are tailored to each individual patient. In fact, our patient satisfaction scores for communicating medication information have improved as Meducation usage rolled out across Health First.”
Poor medication adherence increases emergency room visits, hospital readmissions and mortality rates. It also impairs providers’ bottom lines as they grapple with increasingly common value and risk-based payment models. In part, poor adherence is caused by the wide use of medication instructions that are written at college reading levels, printed in small font sizes and available only in English. They are of little value to the nearly 120 million patients that are low health literate or have difficulty understanding English.
Meducation has been proven to help improve patient satisfaction scores (HCAHPS), reduce readmission rates, and enhance financial performance by generating instructions that patients can easily understand and follow.
“No patient should be given medication instructions that are confusing or difficult to understand,” said Lori McLean, vice president, Meducation, FDB. “By using Allscripts intelligent APIs to integrate Meducation with its electronic health record, Health First has demonstrated its commitment to innovation and to true patient-centered care.”
Polyglot Systems, creator of Meducation and recently acquired by FDB, is a certified Allscripts Developer Partner. Allscripts clients can learn more by visiting the Meducation page at the Allscripts® Application Store.
About Health First
Founded in 1995, Health First is Brevard County's not-for-profit, community healthcare system. The fully integrated delivery network (IDN) includes health insurance plans, hospitals, a multi-specialty medical group and outpatient and wellness services. As a locally owned, not-for-profit organization, Health First is committed to investing in our community. In 2015, Health First provided more than $129 million in community support. To learn more about Health First and how we're giving back to our community, please visit HFgivesback.org.
About FDB
FDB is the leading provider of drug and medical device knowledge that helps healthcare professionals make precise decisions. With thousands of customers worldwide, FDB enables our information system developer partners to deliver valuable, useful, and differentiated solutions. We offer more than three decades of experience in transforming medical knowledge into actionable, targeted, and effective solutions that help improve patient safety, operational efficiency, and healthcare outcomes. For a complete look at our solutions and services, please visit www.fdbhealth.com or follow us on Twitter and LinkedIn.
About Hearst Health
FDB is part of the Hearst Health network, which also includes Zynx Health, MCG, Homecare Homebase, MedHOK, Hearst Health International, Hearst Health Ventures and the Hearst Health Innovation Lab (www.hearsthealth.com). The mission of Hearst Health is to help guide the most important care moments by delivering vital information into the hands of everyone who touches a person's health journey. Each year in the U.S., care guidance from the Hearst Health network reaches 84 percent of discharged patients, 177 million insured individuals, 60 million home health visits, and 3.1 billion dispensed prescriptions.
©2017 First Databank, Inc. Part of the Hearst Health network. All trademarks mentioned herein are the properties of their respective owners.
