Health Grades Expands Health Care Facilities Grading Tool To Include Prescription Drugs

Main Category: Pharmacy / Pharmacist
Also Included In: IT / Internet / E-mail
Article Date: 15 May 2008 - 7:00 PST

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Health Grades on Wednesday announced it will expand its online health care facilities and services grading tool to include information and ratings of prescription medications, Dow Jones reports. The new program will feature information on 4,345 prescription medications, including which drugs are most commonly prescribed and whether use of a certain drug is increasing or decreasing. Users of the tool, which will be available on the Health Grades Web site, also can access information on efficacy, tolerance, side effects, safety warnings, and cost and availability of generic versions. The information is based on data from First DataBank. Samantha Collier, chief medical officer at Health Grades, said, "As patients' out-of-pocket costs continue to climb, access to credible information on the cost benefit of medical treatments is imperative." Collier added that an objective of the new ratings program is to educate patients to enable them to have discussions with their physicians about treatments (Knight, Dow Jones, 5/14).

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