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Surescripts
Expanded award eligibility and updated criteria elevate industry leaders who make meaningful changes to enhance patient safety and healthcare delivery
ARLINGTON, Va. – May 20, 2019 – Surescripts, the nation’s leading health information network, has expanded the eligibility criteria and award categories for the Surescripts White Coat Award™ to include health systems, pharmacies and pharmacy technology leaders, in addition to electronic health records (EHR) vendors. As part of the Surescripts Critical Performance Improvement program, the annual award recognizes organizations who are striving to reach the highest levels of prescription accuracy by adopting best practices and implementing technology enhancements.
“The White Coat Award celebrates healthcare leaders who are improving prescription accuracy for physicians, pharmacists and patients,” explained Tom Skelton, Chief Executive Officer of Surescripts. “By working together across the Surescripts Network Alliance™, we’re having a measurable impact on patient safety and workflow efficiency, and saving substantial time by eliminating back-and-forth phone calls and faxes among prescribers and pharmacists to clarify the prescriber’s intent.”
Since establishing the Critical Performance Improvement program in 2016, the Surescripts Network Alliance has improved e-prescription accuracy by 64% as measured by Surescripts’ Quality Index Score. This improvement was achieved in three ways: by optimizing the appropriate use of e-prescription data fields, including Drug Description, Representative National Drug Code (NDC), RxNorm and Potency Unit Code; by enhancing directory alignment; and by increasing the adoption of the Structured and Codified Sig data field as well as RxChange, CancelRx, and Electronic Prescribing for Controlled Substances (EPCS).
Optimizing the e-prescribing process impacts patient safety, improves time to therapy and enhances patient care. For example, a recent study co-authored by Surescripts found that expanding the use of CancelRx could prevent nearly 10 million potential patient safety risks per year. Identifying prescription accuracy issues at their source also helps ensure high quality prescription information every time the data is used going forward, such as during the medication reconciliation process.
Award Timing, Categories and Eligibility
White Coat Award recipients will be announced in September in two categories: Highest Accuracy and Most Improved Accuracy. Eligible organizations will be evaluated based on Surescripts’ Quality Index Score, which leverages Surescripts Sentinel® to assess e-prescription accuracy. Surescripts Sentinel was established in 2017 to measure the accuracy of e-prescriptions and deliver insights to pharmacists, prescribers and technology vendors. It pinpoints specific areas for improvement and provides analysis of electronic prescribing trends to inform better patient care.
The Surescripts White Coat Award recognizes market-leading EHRs from two tiers (those with more than 20,000 monthly active prescribers and those with 20,000 or fewer monthly active prescribers). To be eligible, EHRs must contract directly with Surescripts, serve multiple provider groups and use one of three designated drug compendia.
The Surescripts White Coat Award recognizes health systems in three competition tiers (those with more than 1,000 beds, those with between 501 and 1,000 beds and those with 500 or fewer beds). To be eligible, health systems must contract directly with Surescripts.
The Surescripts White Coat Award recognizes pharmacy market leaders for improvements to workflow efficiency and processes that ensure patient safety. Pharmacy software vendors, retail pharmacy chains and PBM mail order pharmacies who maintain their own pharmacy software are eligible and will be selected from two tiers (those with more than 500,000 monthly refill requests and those with 500,000 or fewer refill requests).
Visit the Surescripts White Coat Award webpage to learn more about the award categories, tiers, and eligibility.