Texas program links EHRs with smoking cessation initiative

The Texas Department of State Health Services is partnering with the University of Texas and Baylor Scott & White Health to launch a new tobacco cessation protocol called eTobacco.

Under the program, physicians are being trained to identify patients who qualify for help with smoking cessation. The trained physicians are then able to make a referral within that patient’s EHR to the Quitline program. These patients are then contacted, counseled and provided with free nicotine replacement therapy. When the patient is finished with the program, the prescribing physicians will receive progress reports and feedback through the EHR.

“This initiative will have a huge impact on the No. 1 preventable risk factor for all chronic diseases—tobacco use—and stands to net the state over $271 million in healthcare cost reductions and workforce productivity increases,” said Michael Davis, project lead and director of the Cancer Institute at Baylor Scott & White Health, in a release.

According to Shelley Karn, a health reform specialist with the Department of Kinesiology and Health Education at the University of Texas, the hope is to eventually expand the use of the eTobacco protocol throughout the state.