Clinicians need better opioid data within their workflows, says EHRA

The HIMSS Electronic Health Record Association says it's working toward policies and procedures that will allow physicians better visibility for opioid data in the EHR. "We were surprised to find that there was no comprehensive source for the state-specific policies and standards surrounding prescription drug monitoring programs and electronic prescribing of controlled substances," write David Bucciferro and Katelyn Fontaine of the task force in a blog post this week. "So, we set out to create our own." The EHR Association looked at state-by-state data to gain insights on an array of key factors: how long it took providers to report controlled substance prescriptions to prescription drug monitoring programs, what data is collected, who is able to access PDMP information, whether and when such data can be shared across states and how retention of that prescribing data might be limited within an EHR.