Electronic Health Reporter

Appriss Health, provider of the most comprehensive platform for opioid stewardship and substance use disorder (SUD) in the U.S., today announced that the South Dakota Board of Pharmacy is now using its PMP Gateway integration service to provide NarxCare and state prescription drug monitoring program (PDMP) information to all prescribers and pharmacists directly within electronic health record (EHR) and pharmacy management systems.

PMP Gateway is the Appriss Health managed service platform enabling the integration of its NarxCare platform and PDMP information within real-time care team workflow to help providers make more informed clinical decisions at the point of care.

NarxCare utilizes, analyzes and presents information from South Dakota’s PDMP and enables the availability of additional data sources to empower clinicians to identify patients who may be at risk for SUD, overdose and death. NarxCare provides machine learning and artificial intelligence-based patient risk scores and clinical alerts in a visually interactive format to aid prescribers and pharmacists with clinical decision support. NarxCare also helps clinicians connect patients with additional resources within their community if needed, such as medication-assisted treatment.

By delivering NarxCare and PDMP information within workflow through PMP Gateway, this one-click process eliminates the need for prescribers and pharmacists to manually log into the state PDMP separately and then enter a patient’s name and demographics to search for them. Healthcare providers and pharmacists can better evaluate and quickly intervene on behalf of patients with instant access to real-time information and insights.

“Partnering with Appriss Health increases our prescription drug monitoring program’s overall effectiveness and helps to better address the evolving opioid epidemic head on,” said Kari Shanard-Koenders, RPh., executive director of the South Dakota Board of Pharmacy. “Through PMP Gateway and NarxCare we are providing South Dakota’s prescribers and pharmacists with easier access to PDMP information and other important insights right within their clinical workflow, which enhances clinical decision support, patient support, patient engagement and care coordination.”

Appriss Health has delivered PDMP services for the South Dakota Board of Pharmacy since 2015. The additions of statewide PMP Gateway and NarxCare in South Dakota were funded through the SD PDMP’s 2018 Comprehensive Opioid Abuse Site-based Program grant that supports more accurate and timelier data collection, including PDMP enhancements, to address opioid overdose deaths.

Appriss Health has developed and widely-deployed its infrastructure to enable healthcare entities to rapidly deliver integrations across the U.S. More than 130 of the nation’s largest EHR systems and nearly every pharmacy management system and pharmacy chain have integrated PDMP information directly into their clinical workflow via Appriss Health. Eighteen states, including South Dakota, have aligned with Appriss Health to sponsor statewide adoption of PDMP integrations for prescribers and pharmacists. And, more than 500,000 prescribers and pharmacists at nearly 80,000 facilities across the U.S. access 30 million reports per month with PMP Gateway.

With the addition of South Dakota, Appriss Health now also provides NarxCare statewide to clinicians in 18 states across the nation and supports more than 50 million patient encounters per month. Today, the NarxCare platform empowers prescribers and dispensers in identifying over 145 million patients nationwide who may be at risk for controlled substance misuse, abuse, overdose, and death.

“We are proud to continue to support South Dakota, and its prescribers and pharmacists, in maximizing the state’s PDMP effectiveness in the fight against the opioid epidemic,” said Rob Cohen, President, Appriss Health. “The addition of PMP Gateway and NarxCare enhances the state’s aggressive, multi-pronged approach to curbing the opioid crisis.”