HIT Enablement of Medication-Related Care Coordination

Overview: As healthcare organizations adopt the electronic health record (EHR), the pharmacists’ role in using technology for medication management outside the prescription process will expand to the “Medical Neighborhood”. The Pharmacy e-Health Information Technology Collaborative (Collaborative) is an organization focused on influencing the structure, development and implementation of the U.S. Health Information Technology (HIT) infrastructure to assure the pharmacists’ role in medication-related care coordination is part of the patient-centered medical home model. The Collaborative’s focus is to assure the meaningful use (MU) of standardized EHRs support safe, efficient, and effective medication use, continuity of care, and provide access to the patient-care services of pharmacists with other members of the interdisciplinary patient-care team.The Collaborative’s work assures shared EHR models include medication related clinical team-based practice and HIT enablement of care coordination across clinical and medication-dispensing arenas. The Collaborative is working with all pharmacy organizations to facilitate actions to entrench the pharmacist EHR, into the national HIT initiatives in order to deliver and document services provided by pharmacists in all patient care settings through the meaningful use of HIT.