The enormous complexity of practicing 21st century medicine—therapeutic discovery, changing treatment protocols and technology, regulatory and legal pressures—dictate that physician practice management systems move beyond billing and scheduling to include the clinical decision-support tools currently available. Those tools can help practices reduce medical errors, improve efficiency, and contain costs.
And because so many clinical decisions involve drug therapy, any successful practice management system must incorporate a comprehensive and up-to-date drug database. First DataBank's
National Drug Data File Plus (NDDF Plus) is the most comprehensive and up-to-date in the industry. Our wide use among providers, pharmacists, and payers is a clear indication of the trust we've earned in our 25 years as a pioneering industry leader.
Fostering Patient Safety with Electronic Medical Records
Industry and government reports have long pointed to paper records as a major contributing factor in medication errors, which often lead to adverse drug events. Enhanced patient safety, therefore, relies on your practice management system incorporating electronic medical records (EMRs) containing all pertinent patient information, and fast, reliable links to clinical data—including medication information. We've built NDDF Plus from the ground up to provide clear, trustworthy and comprehensive drug information tailored to physician practice workflows.
For example, our
Multiple Access Points (MAPs) are a robust drug vocabulary that employs recognized best practices and a flexible range of drug identifiers so you can zero in on drug information quickly and accurately. The built-in relationships between terms facilitate improved communication, thus smoothing the movement from prescription to claim to pharmacy dispensing.
In addition, many of our identifiers are cross-referenced to RxNorm within the National Library of Medicine's Unified Medical Language System (UMLS), and our data complies with JCAHO and ISMP guidelines for addressing errors that stem from confusing or ambiguous abbreviations, acronyms and symbols.
We're also known throughout the industry for clearly written patient education materials that help improve therapeutic compliance and encourage patients' knowledge about their care.
Streamlining Electronic Prescribing
Another First DataBank advantage is that our drug databases are a consistent element throughout the healthcare continuum—from your practice to retail pharmacies, pharmacy benefit managers, health plans, and employers. More than just a testament to our reliability and industry reputation, our broad presence facilitates connectivity and information exchange, key benefits as healthcare relies increasingly on electronic technology.
Consider the needs of many physician practices to order drugs for both outpatient and inpatient settings. First DataBank knowledge bases incorporate convenient, easy-to-use pick lists of common prescriptions, specific to the drug formulation and intended route of administration. They also enable electronic prescribing systems to filter prescriptions based on known patient information, such as medical condition.
We've also created the
OrderView Med Knowledge Base—replete with physician-friendly navigation—to support medication ordering in the fewest possible steps while still linking to the appropriate product detail for pharmacy dispensing. And you can narrow pick lists based on patient-specific factors, such as age, weight, and organ function.
In addition, our
clinical decision-support modules work with the practice management system's EMRs and electronic prescribing functionality to check for drug-drug, drug-allergy, drug-food and other drug interactions, using a range of techniques that reduce alert overload without compromising patient safety. We also offer an array of other
dosing content options that can reduce dose-related medication errors.
Essential Building Blocks
In short, by drawing on the following components, First DataBank sets the standard for providing user-centric drug information for physician practice management systems.
NDDF Plus is the leader in supplying comprehensive coverage of descriptive, pricing and clinical information on drugs. It encompasses medications approved by the FDA, plus commonly used over-the-counter drugs and information on herbals, nutraceuticals, dietary supplements, and medical devices.
Comprehensive and up-to-date are the key concepts here, since drug content is dynamic and notoriously complex to maintain. It's essential, therefore, that the drug database behind practice management systems be the most reliable in the industry. NDDF Plus is that database. It also offers you the most efficient ways of navigating to exactly the information you need for the task at hand, facilitating more informed decision-making.
MAPs are the flexible, user-centric drug identifiers that enable users to zero in on First DataBank drug information quickly and efficiently within their normal workflow. MAPs incorporate our proprietary
Enhanced Therapeutic Classification (ETC) system and
First DataBank Medical Lexicon (FML). ETC allows you to quickly find products within therapeutic classes and to revise clinical information at as general or specific a level as necessary. FML is a specialized medical vocabulary relating drug products to various diagnoses and health-related concepts in our disease decision-support and dosing modules.
Our
OrderView Med Knowledge Base establishes an order-centric view within CPOE systems to match how a physician naturally orders meds. It is designed specifically to simplify and speed up medication ordering, and is ideal for closed-loop inpatient settings. It pioneers the concept of the Orderable Med: drug content that enables clinicians to use their most familiar drug descriptions as "stepping stones" for completing medication orders in the fewest possible steps. OrderView also: provides common order components, including valid doses and frequencies; links orderables seamlessly to associated products on a formulary; supports dose adjustments for organ impairment; performs mg/kg calculations for final doses; handles pediatric orders; and provides translation for discharge scripts and patient instructions.
Our
Prescriber Order Entry Module also allows your system to incorporate a convenient, easy-to-use pick list of clinically valid adult prescriptions specific to drug, route of administration and medical condition.
First DataBank's
clinical modules for drug-drug, drug-allergy, drug-food interactions and other clinical decision support offer exceptionally flexible ways for you to create applications that categorize and display potentially harmful interactions. Our dedicated clinical staff separates the interactions into highly granular categories, and then carefully and consistently creates subsets of the most clinically relevant drug interactions. This reduces "noise" that less relevant interactions create, and eliminates the need for clinicians to spend undue amounts of time researching alerts.