Inspiring Excellence

In 2020, 84% of all prescribers utilized E-prescribing. There were over 1.9 billion e-prescriptions filled, a 7% increase. 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 Critical Performance Improvement program for Prescription Accuracy & Optimization is focused on working with customers from across the Surescripts Network Alliance to measure and continuously improve prescription completeness and integrity. The Surescripts White Coat Award recognizes Surescripts Network Alliance participants' commitment to improving healthcare outcomes through 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 2020, the Surescripts Network Alliance saw a 10% increase in the aggregated Quality Index Score for electronic prescriptions across the network—an 80% improvement since 2016. 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.

The following Surescripts Network Alliance participants are eligible for the 2021 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), as long as they are transacting using NCPDP SCRIPT Standard v2017071. No submission or application is required.

Quality Index Score is a rating system developed by the Surescripts Critical Performance Improvement program which assigns a composite score between 1 and 1,000 to reflect overall e-prescription accuracy relative to 11 accuracy-related pain points. Quality Index Score is based on data provided by the Surescripts Sentinel e-prescription accuracy engine.

With input from hundreds of prescribers, pharmacists, technology vendors and drug compendia, Surescripts has identified and validated 11 of the most impactful problems affecting e-prescription accuracy. The Critical Performance Improvement program for Prescription Accuracy & Optimization is focused on expanding the use and improving the accuracy 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

Surescripts Sentinel monitors the accuracy of all electronic prescriptions sent across the Surescripts network, raising the bar for patient safety, care quality and workflow efficiency by pinpointing specific areas for improvement and providing analysis of electronic prescribing trends to inform better patient care.

It links multiple data sources including the Surescripts network and industrywide drug compendia such as the National Library of Medicine to provide actionable intelligence that is used to validate ongoing data quality improvements; identify opportunities to improve process efficiency; track e-prescribing utilization to identify trends and patterns; and inform research, white papers and clinical information.

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

This year, we will celebrate winners in three award categories: Highest Accuracy, RxChange Champion and Structured & Codified Sig Champion.

1. Highest Accuracy: This award measures best prescription accuracy as of August 1, 2021, based on Surescripts Quality Index Score which is a measure of overall prescription accuracy based on data provided by Surescripts Sentinel.
2. Champions: Champion awards celebrate customers for investing time and effort in implementing projects and products to drive prescription accuracy. In 2021, we will recognize an RxChange Champion and Structured & Codified Sig Champion for each segment. The winner will be selected based on data provided by Surescripts Sentinel.

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

For the Highest Accuracy award category, two organizations will be named finalists in each tier, and one organization will be named a winner in each tier.

For the RxChange Champion award category, one organization will be named a finalist in each competition segment, and one organization will be named a winner.

For the Structured & Codified Sign Champion award category, one organization will be named a finalist in each competition segment, and one organization will be named a winner.

Electronic Health Records Vendors

• Tier 1: More than 2 million monthly NewRx transactions
• Tier 2: Up to 2 million monthly NewRx transactions

Health System

• Tier 1: More than180,000 monthly NewRx transactions
• Tier 2: 70,001 to 180,000 monthly NewRx transactions
• Tier 3: Up to 70,000 monthly NewRx transactions

Retail & Mail-Order Pharmacies and Pharmacy Tech Vendors

• Tier 1: More than 500,000 monthly RxRenewal requests
• Tier 2: 10,001 to 500,000 monthly RxRenewal requests
• Tier 3: Up to 10,000 monthly RxRenewal requests

   

Finalists will be notified and winners will be announced based on the timeline below. Surescripts will reach out to participants in the preceding months to provide details on venue and logistics.

February: 2021 White Coat Award program launches

Early August: Surescripts evaluates data available in Surescripts Sentinel to determine finalists and winners

Mid-August: Finalists announced

October: White Coat Award winners announced

Each winning organization will receive:

• Plaque and letter of recognition
• Winner emblem 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