Researchers Submit Patent Application, “Electronic Healthcare Treatment Discharge System”, for Approval (USPTO 20190147992)

2019 MAY 31 (NewsRx) -- By a News Reporter-Staff News Editor at Health Policy and Law Daily -- From Washington, D.C., NewsRx journalists report that a patent application by the inventors Hill, SR., Kenneth A. (Fort Worth, TX); Ferguson, III, Clinton S. (Arlington, TX), filed on October 31, 2018, was made available online on May 16, 2019.

The patent’s assignee is National Health Coalition Inc. (Fort Worth, Texas, United States).

News editors obtained the following quote from the background information supplied by the inventors: “The present invention generally relates to management and integration of database information from multiple sources and more particularly to an electronic, patient-centric, portable, interoperable, interdisciplinary healthcare database system. The system includes healthcare data associated with prescription drugs, clinical services, physician and hospital and other healthcare provider services, and is designed for improving and reporting patient outcomes and providing processes and mechanisms for secure access by patients and their authorized healthcare providers.

“It is widely known that the healthcare industry is highly complex. Massive amounts of data are involved in documenting every episode of care, and related transactions. And now the outcome reporting associated with every patient required by the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (‘CMS’) adds to that complexity. Numerous healthcare providers participate in each episode of care for a patient. Healthcare service providers, including pharmacies, physicians, hospitals, laboratories, clinics, medical institutions, and regulatory agencies that develop clinical standards of care historically have operated their own data systems, typically according to unique and different formats and processes.

“An essential participant in healthcare services is another entity, the ‘payer’ often an insurer, or employers, which pays for the services rendered and the claims made by the other healthcare providers. The insurance system includes the insurance companies that provide funds for payments to providers and to intermediaries that submit, adjudicate and facilitate payment transactions for services rendered to patients. In many instances it is difficult to timely access and use important data for patients’ care and their outcomes. With regulatory requirements that affect payments to healthcare providers and require reporting of patient measurable outcomes, further complexity and difficulties are assured if not adequately addressed.

“The population of the United States, at the end of June, 2016, exceeded 324 million persons. Every person is a patient or potentially a patient of the healthcare system that requires medical attention and treatment, each with his or her unique healthcare needs and genetic profile, susceptibility to disease, and medical history. Many people contract an illness or are injured at some time during their lifetimes. The volume of patient healthcare data that accumulates during a patient’s lifetime is enormous. Likewise, the data records of all of the healthcare providers who treat the patients, the data records of business entities including insurance companies and employers involved in payment transactions on behalf of the patients, and the records of governmental agencies involved in benefit programs and regulatory requirements associated with the healthcare of the patients adds to the volume of data.

“The need for timely access and processing of this massive data is essential to ensure that adequate healthcare services are delivered when needed and that the transactions and data associated with those services to patients are updated and completed with minimal delay. There is also then a need to promptly process reported measureable outcomes for treatment services, and ultimately payment.

“An efficient healthcare system that maintains the health of persons active in the nation’s economic enterprise is vital to its economic system. To accomplish the patient care required, it is essential that the data processing needs of all participating elements of the healthcare system be available to fulfill the demands of the healthcare system for timely access and handling of the massive amounts of data generated by the healthcare system. This is true for effective, cost-efficient healthcare services, and appropriate timely payment for same.

“Handwritten record-keeping is clearly insufficient for these complex tasks. And the data processing systems operated by individual participants in the healthcare system have previously struggled to handle the tasks of keeping timely records, even with the aid of intermediaries that facilitate data interchange among participants. The ability to process the complex transactions involved in healthcare, and particularly for maintenance of patient records and for reimbursement of the fees and costs billed by providers--physicians, hospitals, laboratories and pharmacists--has accelerated faster than the capability to document and measure outcomes of the healthcare services (‘Outcomes’) to the patients. Assurance of adherence to standards of care and improved efficiencies are now required by newly applicable regulations and must be realized with minimal delay.

“Actions of the Federal Government in recent years have supplied some of the impetus toward upgrading the efficiency of the healthcare delivery system in the United States. Such actions include the Omnibus Budget Reconciliation Act of 1990 (OBRA ‘90), which requires drug utilization review procedures; an executive order by President George W. Bush in April, 2004, which set a ten year goal for ‘deployment of health information technology within 10 years;’ and establishing the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act (HITECH Act), which sets forth ‘meaningful use of interoperable Electronic Health Records.’ The HITECH Act, enacted as part of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, includes numerous categories of patient health records. And recently, the Center for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) has established requirements for reporting patient outcomes of healthcare services delivered to patients in connection with approval for payments to providers.

“What is needed is a comprehensive integration of the systems for obtaining and processing and utilizing healthcare patient data. To accomplish this task with minimal delay and with ways that are adaptable to the growth of the population, and to the needs of patients, providers and business organizations that serve the healthcare system, it is only possible by the use of highly developed computer systems operable according to program instructions that are configured in scalable ways for these essential tasks. There is no technology other than computers, networks, databases, and systems for processing such a volume of data (‘big data’) that will accommodate the need for data processing in the healthcare system. The need for continued innovation and improvement of the technology of the comparing elements themselves, including particularly the software or program instructions, is essential for the healthcare system to succeed in delivering the needed healthcare services and to meet the governmental regulatory requirements.

“Innovation in healthcare delivery is a never-ending requirement. Well-developed software must be utilized to run efficiently to this end. Software and systems must be faster, with more efficient architectures and innovative ways to organize and structure the data processing environment.”

As a supplement to the background information on this patent application, NewsRx correspondents also obtained the inventors’ summary information for this patent application: “SUMMARY:”

The claims supplied by the inventors are:

“1. A system for providing an electronic discharge summary (EDS) to an identified patient upon discharge from a healthcare treatment facility, comprising: a first pharmacy for receiving an EDS that includes a new electronic prescription for a pharmaceutical issued by a healthcare provider in the healthcare facility via an electronic medical record (EMR) intermediary to a first data processor, wherein the EDS, after a review by the first data processor, is forwarded to the first pharmacy to compare medications to be deactivated by the EDS with prescription records of the identified patient with a prescription history record in other pharmacies associated with the first pharmacy and having prescription records of the identified patient; a first data processor configured by first programmed instructions to receive the EDS issued by the healthcare provider via the EMR intermediary and process instructions in the EDS to discontinue the medications to be deactivated by comparisons with first information regarding previous prescriptions dispensed to the identified patient received from a network of other pharmacies including the first pharmacy that have access to prescription records of the identified patient and with second information from a consolidated database in an electronic patient outcome record (EPOR) data system; and a second data processor coupled to the consolidated database and to the first data processor, and configured by second programmed instructions to receive the first and second information about the identified patient’s prescription history from the network of pharmacies and from the consolidated database, to confirm that medications to be deactivated are discontinued, and to provide the EDS to the EMR for transmission to the first pharmacy for dispensing the new prescription and the EDS to the identified patient.

“2. The system of claim 1, wherein the first pharmacy is the pharmacy identified by the identified patient, i.e., the patient’s pharmacy.

“3. The system of claim 1, wherein the medications to be deactivated includes previous prescription and non-prescription medications.

“4. The system of claim 1, wherein the EPOR data system includes the second data processor.

“5. The system of claim 1, wherein the EDS includes at least one new prescription, a list of medications to be discontinued, and clinical follow-up instructions.

“6. The system of claim 1, wherein the healthcare provider includes a physician, a nurse practitioner, or other authorized healthcare professional in the healthcare facility.

“7. The system of claim 1, wherein the first and second processors respectively comprise: a central processing unit having an operating system; a non-volatile program memory containing a plurality of program instruction modules; and a communication interface for connecting and operating with an external network.

“8. The system of claim 7, wherein the program instruction modules include: a first module containing a graphical user interface; a second module containing the first programmed instructions; a third module containing the second programmed instructions; and a fourth module containing dispensing and consultation procedures.

“9. The system of claim 7, wherein the external network comprises: a first link via an EMR to the healthcare facility; a second link from the first pharmacy to the network of other pharmacies; and a third link from the first pharmacy to the EMR.

“10. A process for providing an electronic discharge summary (EDS) to an identified patient upon discharge from a healthcare treatment facility, comprising the steps of: receiving the EDS and at least one new electronic prescription included therein for a diagnosed condition of the identified patient as issued by a healthcare provider in the healthcare facility in the name of the identified patient and transmitted via an electronic medical record (EMR) intermediary to a first data processor configured by first programmed instructions; reviewing in the first data processor according to the first programmed instructions the EDS to identify the at least one new electronic prescription and medications listed in the EDS to be deactivated and to confirm the presence of clinical follow-up instructions associated with the diagnosed condition stated in the EDS; parsing the contents of the EDS in the EPOR into its components and forwarding each component to a first pharmacy for comparing the medications to be deactivated with first information regarding previous prescriptions dispensed to the identified patient received from a network of other pharmacies including the first pharmacy that have access to prescription records of the identified patient, and with second information from a consolidated database in an electronic patient outcome record (EPOR) data system. sending notices to the network of other pharmacies that the previous prescriptions and medications included in the list of medications to be deactivated are to be discontinued; notifying healthcare providers to schedule appointments for providing the clinical follow-up according to the clinical follow-up instructions in the EDS; preparing the new prescription and the accompanying EDS for dispensing to the patient; and comparing the EDS with the first and second information in a second data processor configured according to second programmed instructions to confirm that medications to be deactivated are discontinued, and to provide the EDS to the EMR for transmission to the first pharmacy for dispensing the new electronic prescription and the EDS to the identified patient.

“11. The process of claim 10, wherein the step of reserving comprises the step of: acknowledging receipt of a message containing the EDS to the EMR.

“12. The process of claim 10, wherein the step of reviewing comprises the step of confirming presence of required components of the EDS including patient identity, condition diagnosed, new prescription and non-proscription medications, medications to be deactivated and discontinued, and clinical follow-up instructions.

“13. The process of claim 10, wherein the step of parsing comprises the steps of: accessing a module from the programmed instructions in the first data processor to compare a medication to be deactivated with the first information regarding previous prescriptions; and comparing the medication to be deactivated with the second information from the consolidated database.

“14. The process of claim 10, wherein the step of notifying comprises the step of: enrolling the identified patient in the required clinical follow-up according to the clinical follow-up instructions.

“15. The process of claim 10, wherein the step of preparing the new prescription comprises the steps of: filling the new prescription for dispensing it to the identified patient; and delivering the EDS and the new prescription and associated consultation as needed about the new prescription, the deactivated medications, and the clinical follow-up instructions contained in the EDS.

“16. The process of claim 10, wherein the step of comparing comprises the steps of: confirming to the EPOR data system the comparison of the EDS with the first and second information; and updating the EPOR data system with a message stating the new prescription has been dispensed, the discontinued medications deactivated, and the clinical follow-up instructions delivered and scheduled.”

For additional information on this patent application, see: Hill, SR., Kenneth A.; Ferguson, III, Clinton S. Electronic Healthcare Treatment Discharge System. Filed October 31, 2018 and posted May 16, 2019. Patent URL: http://appft.uspto.gov/netacgi/nph-Parser?Sect1=PTO1&Sect2=HITOFF&d=PG01&p=1&u=%2Fnetahtml%2FPTO%2Fsrchnum.html&r=1&f=G&l=50&s1=%2220190147992%22.PGNR.&OS=DN/20190147992&RS=DN/20190147992

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