Without a connected healthcare system, patients, providers and payers face a variety of challenges—from health and wellness, to financial and risk implications. For instance, between 28% and 31% of all paper prescriptions either never make it to the pharmacy, or are not picked up once patients see how much it will cost.⁵ As a result, according to the World Health Organization, non-adherence to prescription medication costs the U.S. healthcare system close to $300 billion per year. This is despite the fact that adherence to low-cost maintenance medications for treating chronic diseases like diabetes have been shown to reduce costly hospital admissions and visits to emergency departments.

Surescripts addresses the challenges to medication adherence by providing physicians with patients’ pharmacy benefit information and enabling the physician to electronically route prescriptions to the pharmacy of the patient’s choice. E-prescribing is one of the earliest examples of how technology can be used to drive down healthcare costs and improve quality, by getting needed medications to patients in a timely, convenient and secure manner. With e-prescribing, 100% of prescriptions are delivered to the pharmacy for dispensing and pickup, with no need for patient intervention, increasing first-fill medication adherence by 10%.

Starting in 2015, Surescripts launched and continues to develop additional products and services focused on addressing the medication adherence epidemic.