Resnick identifies the challenges associated with patient discharges, transitions of care, and medication management and discusses solutions in use today.
Cureatr's CEO Richard Resnick joined Brian Zimmerman on the Becker's Payer Issues Podcast to discuss how pharmacist-led, patient-centered care is helping patients live healthier, longer lives.
In the podcast, Resnick explained why the challenges associated with patient discharges and transitions of care are significant pain points for payers and providers. He explored the challenges of medication management and described how current HEDIS® and CMS Stars performance measures fall short of addressing the effectiveness of medication reconciliation programs. Among the barriers to providing more complete medication management and better outcomes that reduce patient harm and readmissions that Resnick highlighted: prevalence of medication errors on discharge, providers not knowing when patients are discharged, incomplete patient information, a lack of time available for providers to perform medication reconciliation post-discharge, and the increasing complexity of medication regimens.
Despite such significant challenges, Resnick noted that there are solutions helping payers and providers address these and other risks, including more organizations leaning on the expertise of clinical pharmacists. "There are lots of medication regimens we see where there is no way anybody but a clinical pharmacist could make sense of where the inherent danger is because of the multiple interactions and dosages."
Resnick also calls attention to the importance of gaining access to more complete patient information. "You need to know all the medications that [patients] have in their medicine cabinet — not just what's in your EMR, but the other [medications] that come from other providers. You need to know what happened in the hospital and you may or may not get that record."
He continues, "If you're a provider who is interested in this really important effort around making sure transitions are done safely and optimally; if you've got the time; if you know that your patient's been discharged in real time; if you've got all this information that's not available in your EMR; if you know how to reach the patient in a non-abrasive way; and you can actually speak to and identify all of the risk without overinvesting time or money or brain power, you can solve this [medication management] problem."
Listen to the full podcast here.
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