Avicenna Medical Blog

Chronic Disease Management and Adverse Drug Events

Posted by Yehuda Bechar on Mon, May 03, 2010 @ 11:39 AM

Here are the facts:

"One of six Americans who visit emergency rooms due to adverse drug-related events will need to be hospitalized. Drugs that commonly require monitoring in outpatient settings accounted for over half of all unintentional drug overdoses that resulted in an emergency room visit.  With monitoring, clinicians can adjust the patient's dosage to prevent avoidable adverse events."

The research also found that among those aged 65 and older, 87% of all hospitalizations from unintentional drug overdose were due to drugs that commonly require outpatient monitoring. Over $85 billion is spent each year to treat drug-related problems caused by misuse of drugs in the ambulatory setting. 

This study just reveals the need for a better and more efficient way to follow up patients with chronic conditions that require close drug monitoring.  Chronic disease management should be a priority for any specialist after the patient leaves their office. Correct and timely drug monitoring can prevent liver damage, kidney damage, thyroid problems, heart attacks, and death.

It would be nice to have a tool that would make this process easy, painless, and cheap. That is how and why AviTracks was created. We started in the anticoagulation setting almost 10 years ago, but quickly discovered that warfarin was not the only drug that needed close monitoring. That is why AviTracks gives health care professionals the ability to configure any drug and the related protocols. Not only that, but patients can be stratified according to their risk and different courses of treatment can be assigned to each patient automatically.  Once the drug and the protocols are set up, AviTracks does the rest. Alerts for out of range labs can be set by patient and physician, as well as reminders for labs due and incoming results. 

If you are interested in learning more about how AviTracks can help you practice contact us. We will be happy to set up a on-line demonstration for you.

 

Tags: Chronic Care Management / CCM, Disease Management