News / Health & Wellness
San Francisco General Hospital Licenses Meducation® to Improve Patients’ Understanding of Their Medications
San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center (SFGH) has licensed Polyglot Systems’ Meducation® software for a pilot project to help its patients better understand their medications. Accounting for 20 percent of all in-patient care provided in San Francisco, San Francisco General serves a population that speaks many languages and has widely varying levels of health literacy. In such an environment, effectively communicating medication instructions can be a challenge. Meducation® is designed to overcome this challenge.
It is essential that patients understand their medication instructions. “Approximately 50 percent of patients fail to adhere to their medication instructions – that is, they don’t take their medications as prescribed. This problem has been associated with more than 100,000 deaths annually and hundreds of billions of dollars in avoidable healthcare costs,” said Sims Preston, Polyglot CEO. “To improve adherence, we must provide medication instructions that all patients can understand. Since more than 90 million Americans are either low health literate or have limited English proficiency, this means offering instructions in multiple languages and simplified, easy-to-understand formats.”
Developed under a grant from the National Institutes of Health, Meducation delivers medication instructions that are written at a 5th to 8th grade reading level in any of 18 languages, can be printed in large fonts for those with impaired vision and use pictograms to convey information clearly. For certain especially hard to use medications, Meducation allows patients to access on-line videos demonstrating proper medication use.
“San Francisco General serves more than 100,000 patients per year. In a population that size, the communication needs are diverse” said Dr. Michelle Schneidermann, hospitalist and Chair, SFGH Care Transitions Taskforce. Dr. Schneidermann is also an Associate Clinical Professor of Medicine, in the Division of Hospital Medicine at UCSF. “Meeting those needs is essential not just for ensuring adherence but, more broadly, for ensuring that the care we deliver is truly patient centered. It is our commitment to effective, patient-centered care that makes us excited about innovations like Meducation.”
SFGH’s use of Meducation is supported by a grant from the Gordon and Betty Moore Foundation.
About San Francisco General Hospital
San Francisco General Hospital and Trauma Center is the sole provider of trauma and psychiatric emergency services for the City and County of San Francisco. A comprehensive medical center, SFGH serves some 100,000 patients per year and provides 20 percent of the city’s inpatient care. In 2011, SFGH became the first hospital in the country to be certified for a Traumatic Brain Injury program. As San Francisco’s public hospital, SFGH’s mission is to provide quality health care and trauma services with compassion and respect to patients that include the city’s most vulnerable. General Hospital is also one of the nation’s top academic medical centers, partnering with the University of California, San Francisco School of Medicine on clinical training and research.
About Polyglot Systems
Polyglot Systems’ award-winning software is designed to improve patient understanding, thereby improving health, reducing costs and increasing patient satisfaction. Polyglot’s products have been licensed to hospitals, health systems, clinics, pharmacies and public health departments. www.pgsi.com
