Missouri Health Connection and DrFirst Partner to Expand and Improve State-Wide Access to Life-Saving Medication History Data

PR Newswire

ROCKVILLE, Md., March 12, 2019 /PRNewswire/ -- DrFirst, the nation's leading provider of e-prescribing, price transparency, and medication management solutions, announced today that it has successfully implemented an interoperability gateway with Missouri Health Connection (MHC) that will give clinicians easy access to the deepest, most reliable sources of medication history. As one of the largest health information exchange (HIE) networks in the United States, MHC is the only secure, statewide HIE in Missouri. Expanding into the Midwest, MHC provides over 8,000 clinicians, hundreds of clinics and community health centers and more than 75 hospitals, and health plans with access to comprehensive patient health records for more than 20+ million patients.

This exclusive partnership between MHC and DrFirst was created to offers clinicians turnkey access to a broad medication history database as well as the ability to share prescription data from their organization's EHR, without involving their IT department. The connection was built based on industry best practices, and the exchange of reliable data improves the timeliness, scope, and accuracy of the patient's medication history to support safe and effective clinical decisions across the state.

"DrFirst has proven to be a strong partner. Their expertise addresses standard HIE protocols and truly empowers our members with better data that enables them to remain laser-focused on patients and providing the best care," said Angie Bass, President, and CEO of MHC. "In addition to obtaining medication history data and providing it to our users, MHC can now access additional data that wasn't previously available to us thanks to DrFirst's extensive and high-quality resources. This work will improve the efficiency of care and help ensure safer, better outcomes for our residents."

Overcoming Regional and State HIE Challenges
HIEs are frequently limited to data only from their clinician and hospital members and/or compatible EHRs. By partnering with DrFirst, clinicians and hospitals are accessing the most comprehensive and timely data from HIE-member and non-member clinicians and EHRs, as well as pharmacies, pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs), and health insurers nationwide. Along with medication histories, data includes dosing instructions and fill history, which helps prescribing clinician determine medication adherence and identify higher-risk patients.

"Helping patients achieve optimal health is challenging when medication history is incomplete, or worse, inaccurate," said G. Cameron Deemer, President of DrFirst. "That's why we are excited to help support clinicians throughout Missouri with access to the most comprehensive and timely medication history in the industry at the point-of-care. At the same time, we will capture the most current information and continue to enrich medication history data to support safe and more effective clinical decisions as well as continuity of care."

About DrFirst
DrFirst is the nation's leading provider of e-prescribing, price transparency, and medication management solutions. They enable stakeholders across the healthcare industry to use comprehensive real-time data and connectivity to increase their patient safety ratings, efficiency, and profitability. Today, more than 220,000 healthcare professionals and more than 60% of electronic health record (EHR) vendors depend on DrFirst's innovative software solutions to improve clinical workflows, expedite secure collaboration across a patient's care team and drive better health outcomes. The company's integrated technologies include its award-winning electronic prescribing platform, the most comprehensive medication history available, clinically specialized secure messaging, and patient medication adherence monitoring and benefits checking. In addition, DrFirst was the first to offer e-prescribing for controlled substances (EPCS) and is considered the industry standard for providers nationwide. For more information, please visit www.drfirst.com or connect with us @DrFirst.

About Missouri Health Connection (MHC)
MHC's mission focuses on quality patient care, improving health outcomes, innovations to improve efficiencies and reducing costs for our Participants. Members of MHC's HIE network receive innovative, cost effective strategic services that provide a return on investment by transforming the delivery of care. MHC serves as an unbiased, vendor agnostic, trusted health information technology solution that provides an advanced technological framework enabling access to comprehensive electronic patient records across from multiple data sources in real-time. MHC's services are designed to support health care clinicians and payors with more complete and accurate patient health records. The electronic exchange of health records in the MHC network enables clinicians to quickly and securely access and receive real-time comprehensive patient health records resulting in improved quality of health care delivery by coordinating care, reducing preventable errors and avoiding treatment duplication. MHC's service solutions improve health care outcomes and quality by supporting access to aggregated patient information to identify gaps in patient care and provide more clinical data to clinicians and care coordinators for enhanced clinical decision making. As the Midwest gateway, MHC is a nationally identified HIE gateway in the CMS supported Patient Centered Data Home initiative, facilitating the national exchange of clinical information across the country by connecting to more than 40 other HIEs. Additionally, MHC is also connected to Veterans Administration and the Department of Defense.

DrFirst Media Contact:
Jenn CohenAmendola Communications
404-759-3933
[email protected]

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