Dog and Cat People Agree: E-Prescribing Can Improve Care for Our Pets

Whether you consider yourself a dog-person or a cat-person, or for that matter, a bird, fish or rabbit person, there’s one thing we can all agree on: we love our pets and want nothing but the best for them.

And if you’ve brought your pet to see a veterinarian lately, you might have noticed that the fax machine and telephone continue to be the only way our pets’ prescriptions are sent to the pharmacy.

More than two decades ago, Surescripts established E-Prescribing that would replace hand-written prescriptions for humans, enabling prescribers to send safer, standardized prescriptions to the patient’s pharmacy to be filled. Since then, Surescripts processes billions of e-prescriptions from more than one million prescribers each year.

For the same reasons this innovative technology mattered for clinicians and patients, veterinarians will now be supported by Surescripts E-Prescribing for Veterinarian Medications.

Adam Forman, COO, DAW Systems, Inc. (ScriptSure), a technology provider, said “we are excited to expand the benefits of Surescripts E-Prescribing beyond human patients to our animal patients and the veterinarians who care for them.”

“Together with Surescripts, we will enable veterinarian prescribers to securely transmit electronic prescriptions to retail pharmacies, streamlining the prescription process for pets, enhancing patient safety and reducing the potential for medication errors.”

The Right Time For Vet Meds

Timing is everything.

Similar to the primary care provider shortages and climbing clinician burnout we read in the news, veterinarians are also in short supply, and the need for their services continues to grow.

Relying on hand-written prescriptions, phone calls and faxes only adds to the time-consuming administrative tasks that take veterinarians’ time – time that could be better spent with the animals in need of care.

At the same time, the National Council for Prescription Drug Programs (NCPDP) SCRIPT Standard Version 2023011 was finalized in a June 2024 final rule by the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS).

This means that E-Prescribing for Veterinarian Medications will benefit from the latest safety and quality improvements available as part of the update to NCPDP SCRIPT Standard Version 2023011.

Improved Prescribing Leads to Better Care for Our Pets

Our pets are part of our families. It’s safe to say that their unconditional love and companionship is like nothing else.

Innovations that can improve our ability to care for our pets—alleviating the burnout-causing administrative tasks burdening veterinarians and providing quicker time to therapy, improving medication adherence and overall better-quality care is as easy to say yes to as giving an extra treat, belly scratch or snuggle to our pets.