RxInformatics.com instead

Please go to the following site for ongoing blog post and discussions.

http://rxinformatics.com/

RxInformatics is a collaborative site with Chad Hardy and John Poikonen. Rather than support his blog, I will be consolidating on this site.

I will cross post to my personal blog as well at http://rxdoc.org/ or http://pharmacyinformatics.wordpress.com/

Thank you all for your comments and interest!

John Poikonen, PharmD

ASHP Hypocrisy

I have commented on the cluelessness of Am Soc of Health System Pharmacists (ASHP) on-line publishing model in the past via their forums.

My motivation for this is to get them to wake up and realize the potential of a full scale on line presence and to get them off of their antiquated paper publishing model before they go by the way of the Rocky Mountain News and Seattle Intelligencer

A new bizarre irony and hypocritical situation has emerged. While endorsing electronic medical records they still will not allow members to opt out of getting publications on paper. Their journal is extremely valuable and of high quality that I read religiously on lne. Every two weeks a large (rather nice, but incredibly wasteful) package arrives. Every two weeks I populate my town’s landfill with more waste.

Posted via web from RxDoc.Org

Why is there not a Sermo for Pharmacists? Lets start one

See http://www.sermo.com/

The Sermo business model is based on “Information Arbitrage.” This is the opportunity that arises when breaking medical insights intersect with the demand for actionable, market-changing events in healthcare. Our clients include some of the nation’s most prestigious healthcare companies, financial services institutions and government agencies: any organization that can benefit from early insight into clinical events. These parties create a financial incentive that is used to generate, sustain, and support participation in the online physician community.

Through information arbitrage, our clients are able to:

• Help forecast potential problems or new uses for commercially significant medical products and therapies
• Gain early insight into outbreaks and other changes in disease states and conditions that can affect the public health
• Perform epidemiologic research investigations
• Perform real-time surveys of the opinion of practicing physicians on topics related to medical care
• Assess the success and adoption of best practice recommendations
• Find opportunities to improve medical practice, and protect and promote patient safety and the public health

Clients pay a subscription fee and in return can post questions to the Sermo community. If you vote on one of these postings, you may be financially rewarded for your astute observations.

Posted via web from RxDoc.Org

(NQF) has revised its list of practices that have proven effective in reducing adverse events - Pharmacy Informatics perspective

The National Quality Forum (NQF) has revised its list of practices that have proven effective in reducing adverse events.  This is a very impressive list of practices.  It also revealing what is not on the list.

From a pure pharmacy informatics perspective the following practices are good to see.  CPOE and Pharmacy leadership are, of course, welcome additions to this list.  Using technology to enhance medication reconciliation and antimicrobial stewardship will go a long way to enhancing care as well and need a full court press by pharmacy and informatic departments.

Bar Code Medication Administration (BCMA) is not on the list.  This is not a big surprise.  I have settled into a role and view of a counter balance to most of my pharmacy colleagues.  There is a wide effort to implement BCMA to decrease adverse events without much evidence that it does anything.   Spouting a negative view on this practice is not comfortable nor one that I believe will last forever.  I fully believe that this practice will eventually be proven effective.  At this time it clearly is not.  Given this list of these proven practices, spending time and effort on BCMA if all of these practices are not fully exploted, may even be harmful.  We all have limited resources and time taken away from proven practices to ones of dubious value needs to be evaluated.

What say you?

John Poikonen
john@poikonen.NET
http://twitter.com/poikonen
Blog = http://pharmacyinformatics.wordpress.com/

Posted via email from RxDoc.Org

No More NUPOR Mooing and Musings #3

The first article on NUPOR is out in the April 1^st, Am J Health System Pharmacy. It is brilliant and will change the face of pharmacy as we know it (IMHO of course).

Opportunity cost of pharmacists’ nearly universal prospective order review

Allen J. Flynn

Am J Health Syst Pharm 2009;66 668-670
http://www.ajhp.org/cgi/content/full/66/7/668

I will have a letter in response (and support) of this from an informatics point of view in the next issue, April 15^th AJHP. There already are other responses in press and will be appearing soon. This topic is also covered in my blog. Click this for more info (if you dare/care)

http://pharmacyinformatics.wordpress.com/?s=NUPOR

There is a link at the bottom of the article’s full text to submit a response the article. I encourage you to do this whether you agree, disagree or have additional points to make. This is the AJHP link to send a direct response.

http://www.ajhp.org/cgi/eletter-submit/66/7/668

I look forward to hearing and viewing the responses.

Posted via email from poikonen's posterous

Two Very Different Views of eRx and EHR benefits

E-prescribing savings will offset the $19 billion feds will spend for health IT
and
Bad Bet on Medical Records

While not exactly apples to apples, example of the diverse opinions.  Mine is somewhere in the middle.  I do not think eRx will achieve this lofty goal.  The Washington Post editorial is a bit biased.  Not sure what the authors axe to grind is?

Posted via email from poikonen's posterous

Health Affairs March April 2009 Issue

The latest issue of Health Affairs is packed full of content on health information technology from almost every angle.  This issue will keep me reading for some time.  There is a web site that has the entire audio, video and powerpoints from a briefing in Washington DC.  Twitter has a series of tweets done from the meeting that is insightful, especially if you read when viewing the video; you get this weird virtual feeling of being there.  One of the articles, free to all, called Social Media In Health Care is excellent.

Posted via email from poikonen's posterous