Opioid Clinical Process Module Announced
Innovative ‘Out-of-the-Box’ Capability for Hospitals Will Be Unveiled for Demonstration at the HIMSS Annual Healthcare Tech Conference in Las Vegas – Exhibit Booth #1473
Improving Patient Quality & Safety and Cost Containment for Hospitals
Minneapolis, February 28, 2018 – LogicStream Health, a leading healthcare software firm supporting hundreds of hospitals nationwide, today announced innovative new opioid clinical process module software to improve and better control clinical processes guiding opioid prescribing. The opioid clinical process module is part of LogicStream Health’s software platform. The company said this innovation stands alone in its capability to help frontline clinical teams improve and better control care delivery processes that too often result in the overprescription and misuse of opioid medications.
LogicStream Health’s Clinical Process Module to Prevent Opioid Misuse will be demonstrated at its Booth (1473) on the Conference Exhibition Floor at HIMSS18. The company said its module is designed and packaged with ‘out-of-the-box’ capability to improve clinical processes to give clinicians greater guidance in and control over opioid prescribing practices. As described recently in Health Affairs – a leading healthcare policy periodical – overtreatment with opioid medications has “driven an epidemic of opioid addiction and drug overdoses, now the leading cause of accidental death in the United States.”(1) According to the report, authored by a panel of clinical executives at a leading U.S. health system, “Inpatient overprescription of opioids such as morphine, oxycodone, and hydrocodone happens in a variety of ways…”(2)
“Our clinical process software module will help prevent opioid prescribing variation, overprescription, and misuse by improving, standardizing and better controlling clinical processes,” said Brita Hansen, M.D., LogicStream Health Chief Medical Officer. “We are announcing a groundbreaking software innovation that empowers frontline clinical teams with self-service tools providing instant, highly actionable insights to fix broken and inefficient clinical processes that are contributing to opioid overprescription and misuse.”
Dr. Hansen said LogicStream Health’s Clinical Process Module to Prevent Opioid Misuse will include current and evolving evidence-based guidelines for opioid prescribing. By using the Clinical Process Module, overall practice and prescribing habits can be understood and controlled, and clinical processes improved to better guide clinicians in assessing and documenting appropriateness for initiating or continuing opioids; in selecting appropriate opioid type, dosage and duration; and in assessing patient risk for harm associated with opioid use.
When tackling opioid overprescribing, according to Dr. Hansen, clinicians must understand and improve both general ordering practices and adherence to best practice guidelines. Unfortunately, she said, it has historically been very difficult to have clear insight into clinician ordering habits, and even more difficult to benchmark among clinician peer groups. Additionally, as best practice guidelines are emerging around opioid prescribing – for example, guidelines emphasizing the importance of assessing patient risk prior to initiating opioids – electronic health records are not yet equipped to guide clinicians or provide decision support during the prescribing process. These are problems the LogicStream Health module helps health systems solve, according to Dr. Hansen.
“The problem our software is addressing today is easily making visible a process map and blueprint for appropriate opioid therapy for clinicians,” Dr. Hansen said. “In addition, our software’s unique, real-time capability measures, improves and, ultimately, empowers frontline clinical teams to better control their processes and workflows so they are continuously and reliably aligned with evidence-based clinical guidelines. Fundamentally, our new module represents an opportunity to help clinicians win the war on opioid misuse.”
According to Dr. Hansen, LogicStream Health’s software provides actionable information in the hands of empowered and instantly insightful clinical teams who can quickly and easily access important data. She said improving clinical processes guiding inpatient opioid prescribing is the best path for health systems and hospitals to address the current epidemic.
About LogicStream Health
LogicStream Health is trusted by a community of high-performing healthcare providers across the United States. The company’s clinical process control and improvement software-as-a-service (SaaS) platform stands alone in its ability to help customers gain instant insights to improve vital clinical processes and patient care. As a result, customers reduce cost and improve outcomes. Healthcare customers are saving millions of dollars with the LogicStream Health platform, for example, by reducing high-cost medications, achieving significant reductions in catheter-associated urinary tract infections (CAUTI) and reaching nearly 100 percent compliance with venous thromboembolism (VTE) protocols. The LogicStream Health SaaS platform is ‘must-have’ technology enabling clinical teams to quickly improve clinical processes in near-real-time, and is designed for rapid implementation and easy adoption by end-user clinicians, informaticists, data analysts, and executive teams. LogicStream Health, developed by clinicians for clinicians, today is supporting hundreds of hospitals on a scalable and sustainable technology platform to standardize process and deliver highly reliable healthcare. For more information, please visit LogicStreamHealth.com.