Integrate tobacco treatment best practices into your hospital’s electronic health record

Posted on: 10/30/20

The U.S. Public Health Service recommends that all patients who use tobacco receive clinical tobacco treatment support including a proactive referral (fax or eReferral) to an evidence-based counseling program such as the Oklahoma Tobacco Helpline (OTH). 

Proactive fax referrals to the OTH are an effective way to ensure that patients receive follow up tobacco treatment support, including free cessation medications, once they leave the hospital or clinic. Furthermore, they are a proven measure to increase quit attempts and quit rates. 

With electronic health records (EHRs) becoming the standard in modern health care systems, paper-based processes are being pushed out of health care and fax-to-quit programs, which were once the gold standard of tobacco treatment programs, face long term sustainability challenges. EHR-driven tobacco treatment programs offer too many advantages to ignore. Integrating tobacco treatment best practices into a hospital’s or clinic’s EHR holds the promise to create greater consistency, sustainability, clinician satisfaction and impact with a clinical tobacco treatment program. 

OHA’s HHPQ program, a program of TSET, has helped more than 40 hospitals integrate tobacco treatment best practices into their EHR. Since the launch of the first EHR-driven tobacco treatment program in November 2014, eReferrals to the OTH from HHPQ partners have outpaced fax referrals by a ratio of three to one. The HHPQ program has helped over 50 hospitals implement comprehensive tobacco treatment programs resulting in more than 45,000 patients being proactively referred to the OTH for follow up support and countless years of life saved due to enhanced cessation rates. 

If your hospital or clinic would like to develop a comprehensive tobacco treatment program or update your current tobacco treatment model from a fax-to-quit methodology to an EHR-driven model, please reach out to the HHPQ program at [email protected]. (Eric Finley)