Pharmacy Practice News looks at Project BOOST (Better Outcomes for Older Adults through Safe Transitions) and its success in reducing the 30-day readmission rate at the Hospital of the University of Pennsylvania. The program uses MedActionPlan to provide patients at discharge with an easy-to-read dosing schedule.

Read more at Pharmacy Practice News. 

A study by the University of California at San Diego Center for Transplantation examined the benefits of adding a pharmacist to their transplant programs, and the process of medication reconciliation. Several initiatives, including the use of MedActionPlan, were found to improve the safety and quality of care for patients. In addition, implementing MedActionPlan helps facilities meet the Medication Reconciliation requirement of the National Patient Safety Goals.

Read more about this study. 

MedActionPlan users who print the Weekly Checklist or Health Record for their patients will find a useful new feature available: you can now select which day the week starts with. Why would you want to do that? It could make it easier for the patient to use the tool, and save you a sheet of paper in the process.

For example, perhaps you have a patient being discharged on a Wednesday, with a follow-up appointment in one week. With the old version of the Checklist and Health Record, you would need to print two sheets for each: one for the remaining days in the first week, and another for the first few days of the next week. And each page would have several columns left unused, which could be confusing for some patients. With the new feature, you can print a single page beginning on the day of discharge. 

Selecting the first day of the week is a simple one-step process: simply click on the day along the top of the Checklist or Health Record. Your selection on one page will be applied to all the pages. Just click on SUN (Sunday) to go back to the default.

The September/October edition of the Saturday Evening Post includes Keep Treatment on Track: Medication Management Goes High-Tech, an article by Jennifer Fink about patients using cost effective tools like MyMedSchedule to help improve their health.

The story introduces Greg Duggins, a 55 year old liver transplant patient and describes the difficulty of maintaining a complex medication schedule. That's where MyMedSchedule comes in:

Duggins uses a free system called MyMedSchedule.com, which includes an online list of his meds (with pictures) and text message reminders sent directly to his cell phone. “I didn’t know a multivitamin from a steroid,” Duggins says. “The list the nurses gave me had brand names, but the stuff I had was in generic names. MyMedSchedule literally held my hand until I understood what drug was what.”

Duggins shared his user name and password with his sister, Linda, just in case. “That way, if anything happens to me, she knows what drugs I’m supposed to be taking,” Duggins says. He can also print out reports to share with his health care providers.

We'll add a link to the story when it is added to the Post‘s website. In the meantime, you can read the portion about MyMedSchedule here (PDF).