Yale New Haven Health and Yale School of Medicine have launched a partnership with the State of Connecticut and Appriss Health in an innovative effort to combat the opioid overdose crisis.

The collaboration integrates Yale’s patient electronic health record system (EHR) with the Connecticut Prescription Monitoring and Reporting System (CPRMS), a tool designed to help providers reduce prescription misuse, addiction, and overdoses. It enables Yale physicians and other prescribers to readily obtain critical information regarding opioid prescriptions and other medications so they can safely manage treatment and comply with state regulations.

Although Connecticut has had a valuable database of opioid and other controlled prescription information, the stand-alone system is considered cumbersome and has created barriers to clinicians’ use. Physicians have had to access separate systems with different logins, requiring a break in busy workflows.

The new integrated system allows physicians logged into Yale’s Epic EHR to quickly identify patients at high risk for adverse events and overdose. With one click, physicians can then access Appriss’ NarxCare system, which provides a full detailed report of a patient’s opioid and other controlled prescription history.

“Our physicians throughout Yale New Haven Health will now have the critical information they need to make the best prescribing and medical decisions to improve the safety of our patients,” said Dr. Allen Hsiao, chief medical information officer, and associate professor of Pediatrics and of Emergency Medicine at Yale School of Medicine.

“This partnership and integration is one strategy in our Connecticut Opioid Response (CORE) initiative to reduce deaths from opioid overdoses in the state and improve the use of the CPMRS thereby enhancing safe prescribing,” said Dr. Gail D’Onofrio, chief of Emergency Services at Yale New Haven Health, chair of Yale Medicine Operations Committee, and professor and chair of Emergency Medicine at Yale School of Medicine.