The New Jersey Hospital Association is spending $1.5 million on a tool by Collective Medical that will allow hospitals to track opioid prescriptions.
The tool automatically notifies emergency department medical teams of an individual's prescription history. It gathers data from the New Jersey Prescription Monitoring Program. This helps caregivers identify patients who frequently receive opioids from healthcare facilities. Additionally, the data collected by the tool can help reduce readmissions and patients who often receive care in the ED.
The association, along with its Health Research and Educational Trust, is rolling out the tool in hospitals across the state. The trust will fund the installation and first-year expenses related to the Collective tool at hospitals statewide, after which hospital's will pay for the costs linked to the tool.
Collective Medical's tool has been implemented in several states, including Washington, Oregon and Massachusetts.