Surescripts Recognizes Nine Electronic Health Records Companies as Finalists for the 2018 White Coat Award

Recently Revamped Award Celebrates Shared Commitment to Patient Safety and Workflow Efficiency by Improving E-Prescribing Accuracy

Nine finalists have been chosen for the recently revamped Surescripts White Coat Award™ which celebrates the extensive work undertaken by electronic health records (EHR) companies from across the Surescripts Network Alliance® to improve electronic prescription accuracy.

As part of the Surescripts Critical Performance Improvement (CPI) program, the White Coat Award identifies true market leaders who are striving to meet the highest levels of clinical accuracy. Through best-practice adoption and technology enhancements, including RxChange, CancelRx and E-Prescribing for Controlled Substances, they are effectively improving the accuracy of each of the 1.74 billion e-prescriptions that traverse the Surescripts network annually.

“The White Coat Award represents some of our biggest success stories in tackling an industrywide problem by collaborating across the Surescripts Network Alliance,” said Tom Skelton, Chief Executive Officer of Surescripts. “By working together across markets, we are delivering on our purpose of increasing patient safety by moving beyond digitizing prescriptions to optimizing the entire medication process, ensuring that prescriber intent is clear each and every time.”

More than one in ten e-prescriptions—or nearly half a million a day—contains a quality issue within the patient directions (i.e., Sig), according to a recently published study. Optimizing the e-prescribing process can greatly improve care quality, reduce costs and enhance patient safety and ensures higher quality information every time the prescription data is used, such as during medication reconciliation.

In 2015, Surescripts convened representatives from every facet of the Surescripts Network Alliance to identify and address e-prescribing’s pain points. In 2016, Surescripts created Surescripts Sentinel™ to monitor and analyze electronic prescriptions and identify improvement opportunities. As a result of the quality improvements made by EHR companies, Surescripts measured a 26 percent improvement in prescription accuracy in 2017 by optimizing the e-prescribing process across five key elements: Drug Description, Potency Unit Code, Structured and Codified Sig, Representative National Drug Code (NDC) and RxNorm.

The White Coat Award includes three categories: Highest Accuracy, Most Improved Accuracy and Trailblazer. Two finalists were selected from each of two EHR tiers. Tier 1 includes EHRs with more than 20,000 active monthly prescribers. Tier 2 includes EHRs with up to 20,000 active monthly prescribers.

The White Coat Award for Highest Accuracy
The Highest Accuracy award criteria leverages Surescripts’ Quality Index Score as of August 1, 2018. The Quality Index Score is a measure of overall prescription accuracy based on Surescripts Sentinel data that delivers insights to pharmacists, prescribers and technology vendors.

The finalists for the Surescripts White Coat Award for Highest Accuracy are: Allscripts, Aprima Medical Software, iSalus Healthcare and NextGen Healthcare.

The White Coat Award for Most Improved Accuracy

The Most Improved Accuracy award recognizes the EHRs with the most-improved Surescripts Quality Index Score between August 1, 2017, and August 1, 2018.

The finalists for the Surescripts White Coat Award for Most Improved Accuracy are: Epic, The Value-Based Care Solutions group, formerly of GE Healthcare, MEDENT and RxNT.

The White Coat Trailblazer Award

The Trailblazer award recognizes EHRs with the most accurate combined Drug Description, Drug ID, Sig and Potency Unit Code as of August 1, 2018.

The finalists for the Surescripts White Coat Trailblazer Award are: Allscripts, Flatiron Health, iSalus Healthcare and NextGen Healthcare.

Surescripts White Coat Award winners will be announced at the annual Surescripts Network Alliance Forum (formerly Surescripts Customer Forum), taking place October 1–­3 at the MGM National Harbor near Washington, D.C.

White Coat Award winners will be nationally recognized as leaders in e-prescription accuracy in a variety of ways throughout 2018, including a video, the Surescripts 2018 National Progress Report, and presentations at prescription accuracy-related industry events. These honors are designed to elevate these industry leaders’ achievements and build awareness of the necessity for and value of industrywide collaboration in the name of zero-error e-prescribing.

For the 2018 White Coat Award, EHRs that contract directly with Surescripts and serve multiple provider groups were considered. No submission was required. Read Questions & Answers: Surescripts White Coat Award to learn more.