Pharmanet now, please

At the end of last year, a friend of mine had a small heart attack, followed by coronary artery bypass surgery. He’s had serious breathing problems for years, so he went into surgery with chest congestion and asthma. They kept him in hospital for almost four weeks prior to his operation, trying to get his breathing stabilized..  Happily, things went well, and his heart is good for another 50,000 miles.  His lungs have settled down, and while he’s taking a long time to recover, if he gets enough exercise, he should be okay.

During the post-op period and through his recovery, he’s taking a long list of drugs. Everything from aspirin, potassium three times a day to warfarin, a diuretic, a beta blocker and a couple of long unpronounceable heart drugs. Fourteen in total. He’s seen a lot of specialists, home nurses, respiratory techs, physios and so on.

The second question he gets asked by all these practitioners (right after “How are you feeling?”) is “What drugs are you on?” There is, of course, no way he can remember what drugs he’s on, but thanks to his local drug store and some cutting and pasting over the kitchen table, he has a list, which he now carries around from appointment to appointment.  Of course, the list changes from time to time, as his family doctor, cardiologist, respirologist or some other caregiver changes the mix.

I’ve asked various caregivers, occasionally, “Can’t you get a Pharmanet profile?”  Since all these folks are connected with a major hospital, it should be pretty easy to look my friend up and get an accurate list of what he’s taking. The answer has always been negative. Too hard, don’t know enough about it, not available here, drug list would be too long. For better or worse, no health care professional over the past five months has checked his Pharmanet profile, as far a I can tell.

Another friend, a semi-distant relative, also a heart patient, aged 80, changed his drug mix a month ago. Things didn’t go well, and he was at Emergency on a recent Saturday morning. “When did you start taking the new drug?” “Well, it might have been three weeks ago—no, wait, it was only last week. Oh, I’m just not sure.”

At a certain age, our short term memory slows down and we fumble easy questions. A quick check on Pharmanet would have told the story immediately. The good news is that he went to the drug store, got his list of drugs, sent it to the family doctor and he stopped the new prescription, changed another one and all is well.

Pharmanet for the medical practice has been around since 2003. We’re deeply engaged in making access to Pharmanet available to doctors and hospitals across BC. Hospitals are very keen; Interest from physician offices and clinics is minimal. We don’t understand that. While there’s a bit more effort involved (medical practice access costs a few dollars each month, and doctors are required to gather patient consents), surely the benefit of knowing what drugs have been issued to the patient out-weighs the small cost.

Richard Alvarez, head of the national Canada Health Infoway project ($1.8 billion over six years for health IT) was praising BC’s system this morning in a keynote at the eHealth conference in Quebec City.  But what good are these systems if people don’t use them?

Comments welcome, as always.

Comments

[Rob Holloway]

Very good observation John,
What the Pharmacy cannot do is produce a list of what you are actually taking in the current day. What they can do is create a list of what you requested over a set period of time.
I for one because of a chronic disease created my own list of what I'm actively taking and the duration of prescriptions on hand for my Doctors.
Now, if the pharmacist was to ask me of all these drugs I gave you what are
you taking and producded a list for me , that would be great and I might even paid them a few dollars to do it.
In the new systems being designed it would be great as a patient for me to log on to my own profile and request a neat printout I could then carry around.

Cheer
Rob Holloway