e-Health requires better integration

The push for health reform and the much ballyhooed need for greater IT implementation throughout the healthcare system has providers focusing on integration. In fact, more and more healthcare providers are insisting on better integration of pharmacy systems with their core clinical systems, according to a new report from Orem, Utah-based research firm KLAS.

While the report doesn’t specifically evaluate mobile point of care technologies, it provides a graded breakdown of the pharmacy segment’s leading vendors, as well as insight into the priorities of the healthcare professionals’ keeping score. To the extent that mobility is a growing priority for healthcare providers, the report is worth a look.

Entitled, "Pharmacy Information Systems: In the Age of Integration," the report finds that as healthcare providers move to adopt e-prescribing and drive greater patient safety, the need for better integration between core clinical systems and pharmacy automation software continues to grow—and how well pharmacy software vendors deliver on that integration bears a significant impact on provider adoption and satisfaction.

While a pharmacy system's role in the hospital is key, end-users report that they cannot always trust this vital link to perform to its full capacity. So, many hospitals are demanding more safety, more integration, more efficiency and the next generation of functionality. This ever-growing list of demands means the vendors best able to integrate the pharmacy with their other offerings will be able to present a more appealing portfolio to the market.

The report profiles the performance of eight pharmacy automation vendors—drawing on input from more than 350 healthcare professionals—and examines the level of integration each product enables with other components of the closed-loop medication administration process.

Despite positive feedback from providers to some of the recent improvements made by vendors, the pharmacy software market continues to earn some of the lowest satisfaction scores of any area KLAS tracks. In the December 2008 Top 20 Best in KLAS Awards report, only acute care EMR products had an average performance score lower than pharmacy systems. Hence, the need for ongoing feedback.