PHILADELPHIA–(BUSINESS WIRE)–Enclara Pharmacia, the industry leader in comprehensive pharmacy management services for the hospice community, announces the development of two-way medication coupled with Complia Health’s Suncoast hospice EMR platform. This innovation supports efficiency, accuracy and regulatory compliance by sending medications profiled by Enclara pharmacists directly to the hospice patient record in Suncoast.
“This is a huge step forward in creating seamless interoperability, which is critical to our core strategy to make life easier for hospice nurses, improve patient safety and ensure timely access to symptom management,” said Scott Quilty, Chief Commercial Officer at Enclara. “As many hospices face staffing challenges, we want to seize every opportunity to improve nurse productivity and user satisfaction.”
Using a standard one-way medication interface, a hospice nurse profiles new medications for a patient through the hospice’s electronic medical record (EMR) system. That information goes directly to Enclara so that medications can be dispensed either through Enclara’s mail order service or a local pharmacy. While this is the preferred workflow, hospices with an EMR interface still profile approximately 10% of drugs directly through Enclara. With bi-directional interfacing, the EHR remains an accurate “single source of truth” regardless of where the medication data comes from.
“Every time we get an opportunity to increase efficiency, reduce clinician burden and improve patient safety, we absolutely see the value in this,” said Paul Minton, SVP of Product Management at Complia Health. “When we discussed this opportunity with Enclara, they immediately saw the value of building a real-time bi-directional flow of information. I am delighted that Enclara and Complia Health are leading the way in this important opportunity to further enhance the closed loop medication process.”
There are several reasons why a hospice nurse may end up profiling new drugs directly through Enclara rather than through the EHR. These include time constraints in emergency situations and when drugs are profiled during real-time consultations with an Enclara pharmacist. These pharmacists are often called in to advise on symptom management. They also get in touch if they see a problem with a newly profiled drug, such as a potential drug interaction or allergy.
By ensuring consistent drug entry across Enclara and Suncoast patient records, this enhanced integration also simplifies regulatory compliance under the requirements of Medicare’s Hospice Change Request (CR) 8358. Enclara sends drug use information to most of the more than a dozen leading hospice EHRs it maintains integrations with. Other hospice pharmacy administrators (PBMs) do that too, and may even call that service “bidirectional.” However, because a PPE pharmacist and a hospice nurse may input medications slightly differently, there remains some need for manual reconciliation. With the real-time two-way flow of information between Enclara and Suncoast, this time-consuming process can be reduced or eliminated.
The new interface of Enclara and Suncoast is currently in a pilot phase. It will be offered to other current customers in Fall 2021 and will then be made available to all Enclara customers transitioning to Suncoast or Suncoast customers transitioning to Enclara in the future.
About Enclara Pharmacia
Enclara Pharmacia is a national full-service PPE and mail order provider of medications and clinical services specifically designed for the hospice and palliative care industries. Enclara serves more than 400 hospices and 97,000 patients nationwide, helping to reduce pharmacy costs through a clinically-driven model that enables home drug delivery, as well as access to a network of more than 65,000 local pharmacies, including an actively managed network subset of more than 7,000 retail pharmacies, institutional pharmacies and Enclara’s proprietary automated fulfillment solutions. For more information, visit http://www.enclarapharmacia.com.
About Complia Health
Complia Health is a leading provider of technology and expertise to the post-acute and long-term care markets to create efficiencies and simplify processes for agencies in the US. Thousands of home, home, hospice, palliative, residential, bereavement and community care services rely on Complia Health for the clinical, operational and financial solutions needed to deliver profitable, high-quality care to their customers. Complia Health’s innovative products are backed by a leading team of health and technology experts in the United States. For more information, visit http://www.compliahealth.com.