Abstract:
A system for managing patient data for patients moving between a plurality of different patient care facilities includes a first interface for connecting to a plurality of patient care facilities to receive past patient care data. A second interface provides outputs to a current health care provider. A database stores the received past patient care data. A processor includes a set of instructions to configure the processor to monitor the past patient care data with respect to a particular patient and generate an alert to the health care provider over the second interface responsive to a determination that the past patient care data from the plurality of patient care facilities indicates a patient care problem.

Description:
CROSS-REFERENCE TO RELATED APPLICATIONS 
       [0001]    This application claims benefit of U.S. Provisional Application No. 62/127,315, filed Mar. 3, 2015, entitled SYSTEM AND METHOD FOR MANAGING DRUG DISPENSING TO PATIENTS (Atty. Dkt. No. RDPH-32513), the specification of which is incorporated by reference herein in its entirety. 
     
    
     TECHNICAL FIELD 
       [0002]    The present invention relates to a patient data management system, and more particularly, to a system for tracking patient and medication data from a plurality of treatment locations at a centralized point. 
       BACKGROUND 
       [0003]    Within healthcare facilities there is often in need for dispensing drugs to patients. These drugs may be for physical or psychological issues and many of these drugs comprise controlled substances under government regulations and guidelines. Patients often require a wide variety of drugs and treatment therapies. In order to make sure that drug treatment and therapies do not adversely interact with each other, there is a need for some type of management between healthcare providers and medication dispensing in order to ensure best patient care practices. Tracking patients and their clinical data as the patients move between healthcare facilities creates a need for tracking and centrally locating information to improve patient care. 
       SUMMARY 
       [0004]    The present invention, as disclosed and described herein, comprises a system for managing patient data for patients moving between a plurality of different patient care facilities includes a first interface for connecting to the plurality of patient care facilities to receive past patient care data. A second interface provides outputs to a current health care provider. A database stores the received past patient care data. A processor includes a set of instructions to configure the processor to monitor the past patient care data with respect to a particular patient and generate an alert to the health care provider over the second interface responsive to a determination that the past patient care data from the plurality of patient care facilities indicates a patient care problem. 
     
    
     
       BRIEF DESCRIPTION OF THE DRAWINGS 
         [0005]    For a more complete understanding, reference is now made to the following description taken in conjunction with the accompanying Drawings in which: 
           [0006]      FIG. 1  illustrates a system for managing patient care and medication information from a central location; 
           [0007]      FIG. 2  illustrates a block diagram of an ACT system; 
           [0008]      FIG. 3  illustrates the operation of the decision support tools of the ACT system; 
           [0009]      FIG. 4  illustrates alert generation by the ACT system; and 
           [0010]      FIG. 5  illustrates  340 -B functionalities within the ACT system. 
       
    
    
     DETAILED DESCRIPTION 
       [0011]    Referring now to the drawings, wherein like reference numbers are used herein to designate like elements throughout, the various views and embodiments of a system and method for managing drug dispensing to patients are illustrated and described, and other possible embodiments are described. The figures are not necessarily drawn to scale, and in some instances, the drawings have been exaggerated and/or simplified in places for illustrative purposes only. One of ordinary skill in the art will appreciate the many possible applications and variations based on the following examples of possible embodiments. 
         [0012]    Referring now to the drawings, and more particularly to  FIG. 1 , there is illustrated the use of an ACT (Accountable Cloud Technology) system for managing patient care and medication information at a central location. Within healthcare facilities patient care often requires providing various types of medications and treatments to the patients in order to improve their condition. These drugs may be used to treat physical or psychological issues and in some cases comprise controlled substances that must be supplied under government regulations and guidelines. When patients are moving from treatment facility to treatment facility due to their current state of treatment, the opportunity arises for the drug and treatment therapies to adversely interact with each other. The ACT system  102  provides for management of data between healthcare providers and medication dispensing in order to ensure best patient care practices and ensure that drug and treatment therapies do not adversely interact with each other. The ACT system  102  tracks patients and their clinical data as they move between care facilities and creates a meaningful opportunity to facilitate the transformation of clinical care and improve patient care. 
         [0013]    The ACT system  102  is a centralized data management bridge and decision support tool for use by healthcare providers caring for patients. The ACT system  102  receives input from various patient care facilities for example, long-term care facilities  104 , acute care facilities  106 , post-acute care facilities  108  and assisted living facilities  110 . Each of these various types of facilities provide different types of care to a patient within their treatment cycle. Long-term care facilities  104  comprise facilities such as nursing homes or extended recovery facilities for patients that are in need of a high level of long term care. Acute care facilities  106  are facilities such as emergency rooms or intensive care units that are used for patients requiring an acute level of physical care. Post-acute care facilities  108  may comprise facilities that patients are transferred to once they leave the acute care facilities. For example, when a patient leaves intensive care and goes into normal hospital care. Finally, assisted living facilities  110  comprise facilities for patients that are in need of some day-to-day medical care but are still substantially able to take care of normal everyday activities on their own. Each of these potential care facilities are only examples of facilities providing input to the ACT system  102 . It will be appreciated that any type of care facility providing medical care for patients and possibly dispensing medications thereto may provide a potential input to the ACT system  102 . 
         [0014]    Individuals who reside in various care facilities need acute care from time to time and will move between care facilities, such as an emergency room to a hospital, and back to long-term care facilities  104  or assisted living facility  110  after discharge. The ACT system  102  manages the individual&#39;s medical records and clinical data between the various healthcare facilities because these facilities do not share a common platform or way of managing electronically shared records. The ACT system  102  provides a central medical records database  112  and central clinical data records  114  at a centrally accessible facility. This will enable healthcare providers  116  to obtain records  118  through the ACT system  102  and its medical records database  112  allowing the providers a complete view of the patient&#39;s history though a merging of medical data across multiple facilities. Additionally, the ACT system  102  may be configured to generate alerts  122  to the healthcare providers  116  when the system  102  detects treatments or medications that may conflict with each other and cause potential harm to a patient. These alerts are generated against a decision support tool that incorporates an ACT database of clinical and pharmaceutical comparative data that will alert to potential prescription issues based upon clinical, age, medication interactions, or polypharmacy. This allows for a complete review of a patients medication profile prior to transfer to another facility reducing the average number of medications and transcription errors as the patient transfers often includes a new physician and data into a new clinical system. 
         [0015]    Managing patient records and clinical data can be challenging between the various healthcare facilities because they do not have a common platform manner to electronically share records. The ACT system  102  assist in ensuring a consistent continuum of care therapies, medications and general health monitoring across multiple long-term care facilities  104 , assisted living facilities  110 , acute care facilities  106  and post care facilities  108  by importing and storing the data in a common platform that can be shared among the facilities. 
         [0016]    Referring now to  FIG. 2 , there is provided a functional block diagram of the ACT system  102 . The ACT system  102  receives input data  204  relating to patient care and medication from various healthcare facilities such as those described with respect to  FIG. 1  through an interface engine  201  that will receive the information, convert the data and store in a common format that can be utilized by providers. This information is processed and adapted in a variety of manners within the ACT system  102 . Dosage tracking  203  allows for the tracking of medication dosages provided to a patient that is transferring between the various healthcare facilities. The dosage tracking  203  additionally enables tracking of the inventory of dosages within a medication dispensing system. The ability of the ACT System  202  to integrate to Remote Automated Medication Dispensing Systems within these facilities allows for better formulary control across facilities as well as facilitating medication order reviews so that the medication can be dispensed within minutes rather than the traditional hours it can take when medications have to be prepared and delivered to the facilities. This greatly improves continuity of therapy and allows for complete pharmacy review prior to dispensing. 
         [0017]    The decision support tool module  206  identifies various clinical trends to assist in patient care by comparing clinical and demographic data against information within a data repository  210 . Referring also to  FIG. 3 , there is illustrated the various inputs and outputs functionalities of the decision support tool module  206 . The decision support tool  206  incorporates databases of clinical and pharmaceutical comparative data that will alert to potential prescription issues based upon clinical, age, medication interactions, or polypharmacy. The decision support tools  206  receive acute-care data from healthcare facility acute-care databases  302 . This would comprise information from places such as hospice facilities, emergency rooms and the like. The long-term care database  304  provides long-term care data relating to patients that have been kept in nursing homes and other similar types of long-term care facilities. Hospital data is provided from a hospital database  306  including information relating to patient stays within hospital for non-acute care given to a patient. While the above example describes the use of data from particular types of databases relating to acute data, LTC data and hospital data, it should be realized that the decision support tools  206  may utilize numerous other types of data for reaching decisions to assist in patient care. 
         [0018]    The decision support tools  206  perform a number of functions using the data from each of the attached databases. The decision support tools  206  may provide clinical trends analysis  308 . These clinical trends relate to the patient&#39;s current and historical diagnosis, medication history, and clinical data providing a complete medication treatment history for the providers. Additionally, the decision support tool database  210  includes clinical data information such as medication dosing guidelines (including elderly), polypharmacy, and medication interactions that will alert provider for possible medication issues. The clinical trends  308  and decision support tools  206  will assist in maintaining the highest possible level care while reducing the number of hospitalizations (readmits) for a patient. The decision support tools  206  may also generate alerts  310  relating to a number of healthcare identifiers which allow the facility/physician to take action by informing the FACILITY physician of potential medication/therapy changes that may cause issues and/or triggering additional monitoring of the patient related to a newly prescribed treatment or medication. The decision support tools  206  allow for a more seamless transition of patients within health networks using data management. 
         [0019]    Thus, as more particularly summarized in  FIG. 4 , the decision support tools  206  can utilize acute-care data  402  and ongoing data  404  to generate actionable alerts  406 . The alert generation function  212  provides for actionable alerts as an output  214  in the manner described above. The actionable alerts  406  relate to a number of healthcare identifiers such as wound care  408 , appropriate diagnosis coding  410 , lab and demographic data  414 , and prescriptions  416 . Each of these areas provides the potential for problems with a patient when conflicting treatments or medications are prescribed. The clinical support tools  206  will run resident clinical, vital and demographic data against a data repository to provide the actionable alerts  406  that allow healthcare facility providers and personnel to take actions by informing the physician OF medication or therapy changes, scheduling a clinic visit or for actively monitoring a patient based upon new conditions. 
         [0020]    The ACT system  102  also includes a data management functionality  216  in order to enable the sharing AND CENTRAL MANAGEMENT of patient information between hospitals and other care facilities and for tracking patient data with respect to federal requirements such as  340 -B funding tracking. Referring now also to  FIG. 5, 340 -B functions  502  must meet various requirements in order to obtain funding. Items such as data tracking with respect to patients  504 , standardized reports  506  and the tracking of medication dispensing  508  are all required in order to obtain  340 -B funding. The ACT system  102  provides a unique ability to manage the required data tracking and reporting requirements in order to adhere to the  340 -B regulatory requirements by managing the complete data of the ACO (accountable care organization) resident and individual dispensed dose inventory Through the data, the ACT system  102  is able to track each medication dispensed per resident, electronically manage inventory data to the dose level and incorporate required resident demographics and clinical data in order to administer the  340 -B funding across the entire continuum of the ACO. 
         [0021]    The core of the ACT effectively links a patient&#39;s acute and LTC data and applies these two the decision support tools  206  to identify clinical trends that will assist in maintaining the highest possible level of care while reducing the number of hospitalizations. The ACT system  102  uses the repository of clinical support tools  208  to run resident clinical and demographic data against the data repository  210  to provide the actionable alerts with respect to the various healthcare identifiers discussed hereinabove. 
         [0022]    The ACT system  102  allows healthcare providers to be more proactive in patient care and partner with the long-term care facilities and assisted living facilities using the systems data integration. Using data management, resident information is shared between the hospital and the other care facilities allowing healthcare providers a complete picture of a patient&#39;s history. The ACT system  102  provides a smooth hospital discharge in transition to a care facility by allowing for medications to be dispensed at the hospital and the prescription data entered at the care facility even before the patient has been discharged from the hospital with a complete pharmacy review of the new prescriptions prior to dispensing at the hospital. These and other types of advantages allow for a more centralized database of patient care and medication information to be access by multiple care facilities that are involved in the treatment of a patient and provide a better overall patient care experience. 
         [0023]    It will be appreciated by those skilled in the art having the benefit of this disclosure that this system and method for managing drug dispensing to patients provides a centralized patient and medication management. It should be understood that the drawings and detailed description herein are to be regarded in an illustrative rather than a restrictive manner, and are not intended to be limiting to the particular forms and examples disclosed. On the contrary, included are any further modifications, changes, rearrangements, substitutions, alternatives, design choices, and embodiments apparent to those of ordinary skill in the art, without departing from the spirit and scope hereof, as defined by the following claims. Thus, it is intended that the following claims be interpreted to embrace all such further modifications, changes, rearrangements, substitutions, alternatives, design choices, and embodiments.