Overview

Inspiring excellence

Honoring leaders in prescription accuracy and performance for their dedication to improved patient safety and better healthcare for all.

Celebrating leaders in e-prescription accuracy

The Surescripts White Coat AwardTM honors those moving prescription accuracy and performance forward. Whether you’re building more advanced e-prescribing software, resolving performance issues or enhancing workflows among pharmacists, the White Coat Award celebrates these achievements. View our complete list of winners from last year.

Clear, accurate and safe e-prescriptions benefit physicians, pharmacists and patients alike. They protect patient safety, accelerate time to therapy by eliminating confusion and rework, and help ensure patients get the best possible care. Meanwhile, simplifying the prescription process for prescribers and pharmacists can help alleviate burnout.

By receiving public recognition for their performance, Surescripts White Coat Award winners prove that they are achieving measurable results through innovation that is moving the industry forward. They instill pride in their employees and confidence in their patients and other stakeholders. They also inspire other healthcare organizations to strive for prescription accuracy gains of their own, moving the entire healthcare industry forward.

Organizations eligible for a White Coat Award include:

EHR vendors

We honor EHR vendors enhancing their e-prescribing software.

Health systems

We shine a light on health systems working to advance prescription accuracy and patient safety.

Pharmacies & pharmacy technology vendors

We celebrate pharmacies and pharmacy technology vendors making the prescriptions they process clearer, safer and less likely to need intervention.

Congratulations to all our 2023 White Coat Award Winners!

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athenahealth
BestRx Pharmacy Software
CVS Caremark
CenterWell Pharmacy
DAW Systems, Inc. (ScriptSure)
Epic
Huntsville Hospital
Lexington Medical Center
Mercy Medical Center
Optum Home Delivery
Veradigm
Walmart

Award Categories

With three award categories, the Surescripts White Coat Award recognizes overall excellence in prescription accuracy as well as adoption of technology that improves patient safety and healthcare delivery.

highest performance

Highest Performance

The Highest Performance Award recognizes the best overall accuracy score.

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Highest Performance tips
  1. Stay in touch

    Past winners have had a close relationship with their Surescripts Account Manager, who can provide progress reports and insight into how to improve your QIS. Having regular contact with your account manager can ensure you understand the scope of the criteria and how you can make improvements.

  2. Ensure drug descriptions and drug identifiers align

    Ensure drug descriptions and drug identifiers like the National Drug Code and RxNorm align to what’s recommended by your compendia. Past winners have worked closely with their compendia partner to ensure that their drug description matches their e-prescribing preferred name.

innovation

Innovation

The Innovation Award recognizes organizations making innovative strides toward performance optimization across the healthcare continuum. Winners of this category ensure prescribers and pharmacists can provide quality care to patients in a timely manner. Winners are determined by the White Coat Advisory Board and there will be one winner per segment: EHR vendors, health systems, and pharmacies and pharmacy technology vendors.

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Innovation tips
  1. Think outside the box.

    Innovation comes in all forms, and it requires being creative. Think of ways you can help improve time to therapy, reduce manual interventions or otherwise decrease friction for providers and patients.

  2. Work with your Surescripts team

    If there are challenges or pain points you or your customers are experiencing, the Surescripts team can help. Reach out and we will work with you to help ideate possible approaches to these issues.

rxchange champion

RxChange Champion

The RxChange Champion Award highlights organizations successfully advancing the RxChange transaction, which lets pharmacies communicate with prescribers to resolve prescription concerns within their electronic workflow.

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RxChange Champion tips
  1. Connect with end users

    Help your end users understand the RxChange message, what impact it has on patient outcomes and how to effectively send or respond to an RxChange request in a timely manner.

  2. Keep it within the workflow

    RxChange has a much higher utilization rate when it becomes part of the end users’ interface and workflow.

  3. Prioritize and set alerts

    Prioritize RxChange requests by complexity and set alerts or notifications to highlight outstanding requests. 

Eligibility & competition tiers

Organizations of all sizes have a role to play in advancing prescription accuracy. Each organization will only be directly competing with other organizations in the same tier.

EHR vendors that contract directly with Surescripts, serve multiple provider groups and use approved compendia

Tier 1: Average more than 2 million monthly NewRx transactions 

Tier 2: Average up to 2 million monthly NewRx transactions 

Health systems that contract directly with Surescripts

Average more than 10,000 monthly NewRx transactions

Pharmacy tech vendors, retail pharmacies and mail-order pharmacies that contract directly with Surescripts and maintain their own pharmacy software

Tier 1: Retail pharmacies and tech vendors averaging more than 500,000 monthly RxRenewal requests 

Tier 2: Retail pharmacies and tech vendors averaging up to 500,000 monthly RxRenewal requests

Tier 3: Mail-order pharmacies

Questions about your eligibility? Contact your Surescripts Account Manager.

Timeline

February

White Coat Award program launches

Early August

Surescripts evaluates data to determine winners

September

2024 White Coat Award winners announced at the Surescripts Network Alliance® Forum

FAQ

What is the Surescripts White Coat Award?

In 2023, there were over 2.5 billion e-prescriptions filled, an 5.6% increase from the prior year. Simply adopting E-Prescribing aids prescription accuracy and improves patient safety by presenting prescriptions in a clear, consistent format with less room for ambiguity and human error than handwritten prescriptions. But there's more work to be done. We now must turn our attention to the quality, accuracy and consumability of prescription data by ensuring electronic transactions are flawlessly executed—an area which has room for improvement.

For example, more than 1 in 10 e-prescriptions contains patient directions with a quality issue, which has the potential to cause confusion or workflow disruption at the pharmacy. Surescripts is dedicated to helping improve the accuracy of electronic prescriptions to reduce the need for manual intervention and prescription delays. Our Performance Optimization program for Prescription Accuracy & Optimization is focused on working with customers from across the Surescripts Network Alliance to measure and continuously improve prescription completeness, integrity and performance. The Surescripts White Coat Award recognizes Surescripts Network Alliance participants' commitment to improving healthcare outcomes through prescription accuracy and measurable innovation that drives the network forward.

What impact is the Surescripts White Coat Award having on prescription accuracy?

Since 2016, pharmacies, health systems, electronic health records (EHR) vendors and pharmacy technology vendors across the Surescripts Network Alliance® have worked together to improve e-prescription accuracy. In 2021, the Surescripts Network Alliance saw a 10% increase in the aggregated Quality Index Score for electronic prescriptions across the network. As a result, physicians and pharmacists spent less time exchanging phone calls and faxes to clarify prescriber intent. And the best part: this increased accuracy helped patients get the safe, effective care they deserve.

Who is eligible?

The following Surescripts Network Alliance participants are eligible for the 2024 Surescripts White Coat Award:

  • Electronic health records vendors that contract directly with Surescripts, serve multiple provider groups and use approved compendia.
  • Health systems that contract directly with Surescripts.
  • Retail & mail-order pharmacies and pharmacy tech vendors that maintain their own pharmacy software, contract directly with Surescripts.

Eligible organizations will automatically be considered for the award based on data captured by Surescripts Sentinel (which is used to calculate each organization's Quality Index Score). No submission or application is required.

What are the accuracy-related pain points covered by the Quality Index Score?

With input from hundreds of prescribers, pharmacists, technology vendors and drug compendia, Surescripts has identified and validated 12 of the most impactful problems affecting e-prescription accuracy. The Performance Optimization program is focused on expanding the use and improving the performance of:

  • Drug Description
  • Drug Identification
  • Sig (patient directions)
  • Quantity Unit of Measure
  • Days’ Supply
  • Patient Notes
  • Duplicate prescription reduction
  • RxChange
  • CancelRx
  • Electronic Prescribing for Controlled Substances (EPCS)
  • Provider & pharmacy directory integrity
  • Diagnosis Code
How are winners of the Surescripts White Coat Award selected?

Surescripts will evaluate the data available in Sentinel to determine finalists and winners.

This year, we will celebrate winners in three award categories: Highest Performance, RxChange Champion and Innovation.

  1. Highest Performance: This award measures best prescription performance as of August 1, 2024, based on Surescripts Quality Index Score which is a measure of overall prescription performance. 
  2. RxChange Champion: This award celebrate customers for investing time and effort in implementing projects and products to drive RxChange. The winner will be selected  and the White Coat Advisory Board.
  3. Innovation: This award recognizes organizations pursuing innovation towards optimizing performance. Winners will be nominated internally by Surescripts based on various factors and selected by the White Coat Advisory Board.
How many winners will be selected and how is the competition structured?

Winners will be selected in three competition segments. Each competition segment contains tiers based on transaction volume.

For the Highest Performance Award category, one organization will be named a winner in each tier.

For the RxChange Champion Award category, one organization will be named a winner.

For the Innovation Award category, one organization will be named a winner.

Electronic Health Records Vendors

  • Tier 1: Average more than 2 million monthly NewRx transactions
  • Tier 2: Average up to 2 million monthly NewRx transactions

Health System

  • Average more than 10,000 monthly NewRx transactions

Pharmacies and Pharmacy Tech Vendors

  • Tier 1: Retail/technology vendors averaging more than 500,000 monthly RxRenewal requests
  • Tier 2: Retail/technology vendors averaging up to 500,000 monthly RxRenewal requests
  • Tier 3: Mail-order pharmacies  
What do winners receive?

Each winning organization will receive:

  • Plaque and letter of recognition
  • Winner emblem, press release template and social media package for use in marketing materials
  • Recognition during the Surescripts Network Alliance Forum
  • Opportunity to be named in a Surescripts news release, social media, blog post, webinar or other event