Monumental Network Growth Means Good Things for Healthcare

Our 2015 National Progress Report is chock full of good news. There’s no question that the entire healthcare ecosystem is embracing the potential of a fully digitized healthcare system. Providers and pharmacists are increasingly accessing and exchanging critical patient information where and when they need it most.

As the nation’s leading health information network—connecting providers, pharmacists, payers and technology vendors—Surescripts saw an impressive 48% growth in transaction volume from 2014 to 2015 alone. From e-prescriptions, to patient medication histories to secure clinical messages, a total of 9.7 billion transactions crossed the Surescripts network in 2015. This is an average of 3.8 million e-prescriptions in the U.S. each day, surpassing giants like Amazon in daily packages shipped (1.4M) and Uber in daily rides given worldwide (2M).  

Digging deeper into the data, here are some of the top takeaways from this year’s report that illustrate the positive impact our continued network growth is having on the healthcare industry.

Increasingly, providers are securely accessing patient data where and when they need it, and they’re exchanging more digital information today than ever before.

• 77% of all prescriptions are now electronic, indicating the growing number of providers who are embracing digital workflows.
• The volume of e-prescriptions has nearly doubled since 2012, and increased more than 300% since 2010. Surescripts transmitted 1.4 billion e-prescriptions in 2015 alone.
• As of the end of 2015, the Surescripts network connected more than one million healthcare professionals with secure access to medical information for 240 million patients, representing 74% of the U.S. population.

Digitizing data exchange saves time, money and lives.

• Surescripts’ Medication History data may have helped avoid more than 25,000 patient readmissions and more than 15,000 adverse drug events. Since 2010, the number of medication histories processed by Surescripts quadrupled to 1.05 billion in 2015.
• In 2015, massive growth in both the adoption and utilization of Medication History saved hospitals more than $400 million, potentially saving very large health systems more than $2 million per 1,000-bed hospital each.
• The number of providers enabled to use electronic prescribing of controlled substances (EPCS) increased 359% from 2014 to 2015, resulting in a 667% increase in e-prescriptions for these critical medications that require increased security to prevent fraud and abuse.

Despite our progress, today’s healthcare system remains far too fragmented. So, providers must keep embracing technology to access the best available patient data, and deliver the safest, most appropriate and highest quality care possible. From patients, providers and pharmacists, to payers, pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs) and technology vendors, collaboration and smart tools are key to improving care delivery.

As you can see in the 2015 report, the Surescripts network is growing, evolving and delivering real value to the entire healthcare community. We can’t wait to see the difference industry-wide collaboration continues to make in 2016, as we invest even more in improving connectivity, efficiency and patient data exchange.