Last week in Palm Beach, technology leaders from across the country came together at the ASAP Midyear Conference to explore the biggest industry developments facing pharmacies right now. I was there, too: learning, listening and sharing our response to one of those major developments: the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services' (CMS) final rule adopting the National Council for Prescription Drug Programs SCRIPT standard version 2017071. Read more...

In late November, the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) proposed a new rule that calls for an update to the electronic prescribing standards used by the prescribers, pharmacies, their software vendors and Medicare Part D prescription drug plans who serve Medicare beneficiaries. Read more...

The American Medical Association (AMA) supports greater adoption of electronic prescription cancellation solutions, as resolved at its recent 2017 AMA Interim Meeting in Honolulu. The nation’s largest association of physicians and medical students announced its new policy with a House of Delegates resolution stating its support for “the creation, standardization, and implementation of electronic prescription cancellation from all electronic medical record vendors and that these orders be accepted by pharmacies and pharmacy benefit managers.” Read more...

Pharmacists are many things—counselors, medication experts and key members of a patient’s care team. And our ability to deliver safe and high quality care largely depends on the quality and accuracy of the e-prescriptions we receive. We need to be able to clearly understand the prescriber’s intent, and it’s even better if we can stay in our workflow while we’re at it. Read more...

“A perfect prescription is a decision made by a physician, a pharmacist and a patient together.”—Stacy Ward-Charlerie, PharmD, Clinical Informatics Pharmacist and Data Manager Read more...

Before I began my pharmacy informatics career, I worked as a clinical pharmacist conducting medication therapy management drug reviews for senior patients. I recall vividly how almost every one of them would express some level of confusion regarding their current medication regimen. One patient even described it as a puzzle she had to solve several times a day. Read more...

We had a chance to chat with Health Usability Expert Linda Stotsky about the benefits of e-prescribing, and she couldn't say enough great things about it. From improving patient safety and medication adherence to saving healthcare professionals time and money, e-prescribing technology is where it's at. Read more...

E-prescribing is only as good as the quality of the data that goes in. So while the "pipes" of our network are unmatched by any other in the country, it's what's inside those pipes that matters. Read more...

Surescripts 2016 National Progress Report showed that more health data is being exchanged today than ever before, making quality and accuracy even more critical. One important element of data quality is industry collaboration, particularly between pharmacists and physicians. Read more...

With more than one billion e-prescriptions flowing through our network every year, we must ensure the data is comprehensive, accurate and usable. When clinicians and pharmacists receive reliable information at critical points of care--we call it actionable patient intelligence--they can make better informed decisions. This leads to lower costs, higher quality and increased safety--the "holy grail" of healthcare. Read more...

With the shift toward value-based care and the fact that three-fourths of the nation's prescriptions are now electronic, data accuracy is more important than ever. And given that 1.5 billion electronic prescriptions cross the Surescripts network each year, we must ensure the information is correct and workflows are efficient so patient care and safety can be optimized. Read more...

When it comes to healthcare technology implementation, transitions can't be made in a vacuum. As the industry prepares for the new NCPDP SCRIPT standard - with the release date and standard specifics yet to be finalized - we know collaboration is key to ensuring compliance and a smooth transition. Read more...

Medical errors are a leading cause of poor patient outcomes in the United States, including patient dissatisfaction, hospital readmissions, medical malpractice claims and even death. Many of these problems can be avoided if physicians have access to their patients' comprehensive medication lists at the point of care, enabling more accurate medication reconciliation. Unfortunately, accurate lists can be difficult to compile and maintain when a patient sees multiple doctors and has medications filled by various pharmacies. Read more...

In celebration of Patient Safety Awareness Week, below are highlights from our HIMSS17 panel discussion "Improving Patient Safety with Actionable Intelligence." Patient safety affects all parts of the health care system. Research suggests that 440,000 patients die each year as a result of preventable medical harm, and many others suffer lasting health consequences. Read more...

Patient safety is the foundation of effective healthcare, but information gaps ranging from inaccessible medical records to incomplete medication histories continue to plague the industry. These inconsistencies are inefficient, frustrate already burdened providers and negatively impact patients. According to The Atlantic, the U.S. spends $750 billion per year on unnecessary and inefficient healthcare services. Read more...

When patients visit a doctor's office or pharmacy, they want convenience. Consumers expect care to be delivered with ease and efficiency, so they can follow their providers' recommendations with confidence. But when physicians don't know if their patients' medications will be covered by insurance or patients are forced to wait to fill prescriptions only to find out they can't afford them, the process breaks down for everyone. Read more...

The transition from having healthy parents to becoming a caregiver for ailing parents is a challenging experience many adults face. Add to it the difficulty of managing and exchanging data between providers, along with barriers to filling prescriptions, and it quickly becomes a "dizzying" task. Read more...

Time consuming. Inaccurate. Costly. Inefficient. These are words providers use to describe the manual medication reconciliation process, which typically involves lengthy conversations with patients about his or her medication history, and hoping that the memorized list is accurate and complete. Providers also fill in the gaps by calling multiple pharmacies.

Although Surescripts has always worked closely with our network participants to maintain the integrity and accuracy of the information on our network, we still recognize the need to continually work towards even higher e-prescribing quality. Today, e-prescribing is virtually the norm, with more than 1.5 billion e-prescriptions annually - or 3,000 a minute - flowing through our network. Read more...

With over 70 percent of all prescriptions processed electronically, e-prescribing is proof that interoperability is happening. But with many prescriptions still requiring manual intervention, there is still work to be done to improve accuracy and efficiency across the network. Read more...

The Centers for Disease Control and Prevention (CDC) recently released new clinical guidelines to improve the process for prescribing controlled substances. However, there is another important step providers can take to combat the nation's opioid epidemic: digitizing the process with Electronic Prescribing for Controlled Substances (EPCS). Read more...

Six years ago, Surescripts implemented the Clinical Quality Management program to measure, monitor and improve the quality of e-prescriptions flowing through the network. As part of this initiative, we conducted an analysis that revealed the absence of widely recognized guidelines and best practices for e-prescription messaging data quality. Read more...

With 77 percent of all prescriptions in the U.S. being routed electronically in 2015, e-prescribing is now the industry norm. However, there is still room for improvement when it comes to e-prescription quality and the user experience. One area for continuing quality improvement is the Notes field, as described in a recent Surescripts-led study published in the JAMA Internal Medicine last month. Read more...

While standards have helped move health information exchange and interoperability forward, selected challenges remain. Two recently released studies in the Journal of Managed Care and Specialty Pharmacy and Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association examine deficiencies in e-prescribing drug name identifiers and recommend strategies for improving the quality of care. Read more...

As National Health IT week kicks off its 10th anniversary, it's worth reflecting on our achievements over the past 10 years and highlight one of the most successful examples of interoperability: electronic prescribing. Read more...

While e-prescribing does speed up the time it takes information to reach the pharmacy and eliminates the need to protect against coffee spills or physical damage, we are always looking for ways to improve the process. Read more...

In previous posts, I've blogged about the value of medication history during transitions of care, and offered perspective on how medication history can save hospitals time and money, all while improving clinical quality. Read more...

As I mentioned in a previous blog post post, we developed the Quality Management Framework to measure safety, accuracy and completeness of e-prescription transactions. Read more...

In the workflow for electronic prescription routing, there are two core message flows. The first deals with the routing of an entirely new prescription, called "NewRx" in the NCPDP standard. Read more...

All e-prescribing systems use a drug database at their core. Several commercial alternatives exist, as well as some low cost or free data sources. Read more...