Electronic Prescription

WASHINGTON – The American Medical Association (AMA) and 103 state and specialty medical societies are urging the Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) to revise the Medicare e-prescribing penalty policy, which would penalize physicians in 2012 if they don’t e-prescribe in the first six months of 2011.

The letter, sent by the AMA to HHS Secretary Sebelius on Dec. 10, stated that the groups believe the e-Rx penalty policy will hurt efforts to implement widespread health IT adoption among physician practices and cause them to take on needless financial and administrative burdens.

“The last minute decision to require E Prescription in 2011 will force physicians to spend additional financial and administrative resources to purchase e-prescribing software that most of them will end up discarding when they transition to a complete EHR system,” said AMA Board Secretary Steven J. Stack, MD.

According to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) physicians cannot receive incentives from both the Medicare e-prescribing incentive program and the Medicare EHR incentive program simultaneously. However, if physicians choose not to participate in the 2011 e-prescribing program, they will face penalties in 2012 and 2013. Officials said that not aligning these programs will ultimately delay physicians’ efforts to adopt a complete EHR.

“This unreasonable policy leaves many physicians with little choice but to purchase and use a stand-alone e-prescribing program during the initial months of 2011 just to avoid penalties,” said Stack. “HHS must take action now to align the e-prescribing and EHR incentive programs in order to alleviate confusion and reduce financial and administrative burdens on physician practices working to adopt health IT.”

Source    :     http://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/ama-hhs-medicare-e-rx-penalty-policy-unreasonable

Tags: Certified Prescription, E-Prescribing, E-Prescription, EHR, electronic health records, Electronic Medical Record, Electronic Medical Records, Electronic Prescription, EMR, eRx, SureScripts
Posted January 3, 2011 by admin under E-Prescription, EHR, EMR, Electronic Prescription

Last week, the American Medical Association and 103 other medical societies sent a letter urging HHS to revise a Medicare policy that would penalize physicians for not electronically prescribing medications, Healthcare IT News reports.

Under the policy, physicians who do not e-prescribe in the first six months of 2011 would face penalties starting in 2012.

AMA said the penalties could negatively affect efforts to promote widespread health IT adoption. The group also said the policy would create unnecessary administrative and financial burdens for physician practices.

In addition, AMA said HHS should take action to align the Medicare E Prescription program with the meaningful use incentive program for electronic health record adoption. Under the 2009 federal economic stimulus package, health care providers who demonstrate meaningful use of certified EHRs can qualify for incentive payments through Medicare and Medicaid.

AMA said a failure to connect the e-prescribing and EHR incentive programs could delay health care providers’ efforts to adopt comprehensive EHRs (Merrill, Healthcare IT News, 12/13).

Source     :    http://www.ihealthbeat.org/articles/2010/12/13/medical-groups-call-for-hhs-to-revise-policy-on-eprescribing-penalties.aspx

Tags: Certified Prescription, E-Prescribing, E-Prescription, Electronic Prescription, eRx, SureScripts
Posted December 24, 2010 by admin under E-Prescription, EHR, EMR

Surescripts will expand its nationwide E Prescription network to further support digitized medical records and the electronic exchange of clinical information.

Announced earlier this week, the company said it is leveraging the success of its e-prescribing experience and its open, neutral network to enable the nationwide exchange of clinical messages, including up-to-date summaries of patients’ recent visits with their healthcare providers.

The Surescripts network is used by pharmacies, payers, 200,000 e-prescribing physicians, and more than 200 different electronic health record (EHR) vendors to send electronic prescriptions and share prescription information nationwide. The company said network participants will have new secure messaging tools through a strategic investment in Kryptiq, a developer of technology that enables providers, their colleagues, and patients to securely share clinical information.

The move is further supported by two years worth of technology pilot work at MinuteClinic, a provider of retail medical clinics nationwide. Surescripts is already linked with over 500 CVS Caremark MinuteClinic sites across 26 states.

“While there is still more work to be done in e-prescribing, we have the expertise and capability to do so much more,” Harry Totonis, president and CEO of Surescripts, said in a statement. “We are proud to support the federal government’s efforts to encourage doctors to use electronic health record systems to improve quality and safety, and to reduce the cost of care.”

The company said its network supports all federal and state policies and standards for health information exchange — including privacy and security standards (such as Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act and state law), technology interoperability standards (such as Nationwide Health Information Network Exchange) and message types such as health level seven (HL7), continuity of care record (CCR), and continuity of care document (CCD).

The new services will enable Surescripts to offer several options to EHR vendors, health systems, health information exchanges (HIEs), and the physicians they serve. Among the new features are:

• Extended Network Connectivity: Surescripts will support and enable the exchange of all types of clinical messages between EHRs, HIEs, and health systems that, today, are not connected with each other.
• Net2Net Connect: Allows health systems and technology vendors that already support clinical information sharing within their network to connect to Surescripts in order to receive and send clinical information outside their network.
• Message Stream: Secure messaging tools for health systems and technology vendors to enable their physicians to electronically exchange clinical information.
• Clinical Message Portal: Simple connectivity tools intended for providers that, today, do not have an EHR system to send and receive clinical messages.

Source  :  http://www.informationweek.com/news/healthcare/interoperability/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=228000235&pgno=1&queryText=e+prescription&isPrev=

Tags: Certified Prescription, E-Prescription, Electronic Prescription, eRx, SureScripts
Posted December 3, 2010 by admin under E-Prescription, EHR, EMR, Electronic Prescription

Surescripts, the national e-prescribing network, announced in October that it is opening up its network to support the exchange of all types of clinical information.

Through a partnership with technology vendor Kryptiq, headquartered in Beaverton, Ore., Surescripts will offer tools that can be used with electronic medical record systems and E Prescription systems that will enable information to be exchanged among network participants.

Surescripts, a for-profit company founded by national pharmacy associations and large pharmacy-benefit managers, said it would make an undisclosed investment in Kryptiq. It announced the deal in late October during the annual Medical Group Management Assn. meeting in New Orleans. All the services will be compatible with the standards developed for the National Health Information Network, meaning Surescripts will operate as a piece of the NHIN.

The new services will allow the exchange of data and clinical notes among EMRs, health information exchanges, health system networks and pharmacies that are part of the Surescripts network even if they aren’t on the same network.

Wes Rishel, vice president at Stamford, Conn.-based Gartner, an information technology research and advisory firm, said there isn’t a lot of competition for this type of service. But he said he expects that to change.

Given the fact that Surescripts already has a third of all physicians on its e-prescribing network, it will have a leg up against potential competitors, Rishel, an analyst with Gartner’s health care provider research practice, said.

All physicians need to do is add the clinical messaging service, the price for which has not yet been set.

But unlike other health information exchanges, the Surescripts network won’t offer some capabilities that other HIEs might. The most significant is the ability to look up patient data. A physician would have to know whom the patient has seen and message the physician directly for any information, Rishel said.

Scenarios in which a patient shows up at an emergency department unable to communicate and physicians need to look up medical records to determine what’s wrong are rare. But scenarios in which physicians need to send information across town are common. A network like Surescripts will satisfy those needs, he said.

Tom Landholt, MD, a family physician in Springfield, Mo., said he is expecting the network to save him a lot of time when it comes to communicating with referring doctors and pharmacists.

He has used an EMR for 15 years. Although it has helped improve communication between himself and his patients through patient portals, communication between himself and physicians in his community has been lacking, because that has relied on phone calls.

Because 99% of the doctors he refers patients to are on the Surescripts network, they will be able to send secure messages and clinical notes to one another.

He said communication with pharmacists also will improve. Pharmacists know what medications other doctors may have prescribed to his patients, he said, and they no longer will need to make several phone calls and wait for a return call if they have questions or concerns about possible interactions. Everyone will be on the same network and have the ability to send a note directly to another person.

“It’s really about access and communication,” he said. “Because everyone is already using Surescripts, this is going to enable — at very, very little cost — ongoing relationships with other people, like pharmacists, that take care of patients.”

Surescripts said more than 200,000 physicians use its network, and more than 200 EMR vendors offer access to the network.

The expansion of the network will help physicians move one step closer to meeting meaningful use requirements, which are centered around the exchange and mobility of patient data. Meeting the criteria for meaningful use of an EMR will qualify physicians for Medicare or Medicaid incentive payments.

The American Medical Association is a partner with Surescripts in a separate project, ICERx.org (In Case of Emergency prescription history service), which allows physicians to get prescription history in the event of a disaster.

Source :  http://www.ama-assn.org/amednews/2010/11/08/bisc1108.htm

Tags: Certified Prescription, E-Prescription, Electronic Prescription, eRx, SureScripts
Posted November 15, 2010 by admin under E-Prescription, Electronic Prescription

NEW ORLEANS – Surescripts is expanding its nationwide E Prescription network with a new service that will allow for the exchange of clinical health information, officials announced Monday at the MGMA 2010 annual conference in New Orleans.

Officials said the new service will make it easier for physicians, pharmacies, PBMs, health systems, electronic health record systems and health information exchanges to send and receive clinical messages, including up to date summaries of a patient’s recent visits with their healthcare providers.

“The services will be new, but the approach will not,” said Harry Totonis, president and CEO of Surescripts. “Surescripts will adhere to the same set of principles that propelled e-prescribing adoption in the U.S. to 200,000 physicians in less than a decade: privacy, security, neutrality, physician and patient choice, transparency, collaboration and quality. We will continue to work with and enable our EMR partners.  These are the principles that brought together more healthcare organizations for the purpose of electronically sharing information than ever before and these are the principles we will keep. Our network will be open and neutral and we see it as complementary to other healthcare networks and to local exchanges.”

The expansion includes providing Surescripts’ users with new secure messaging tools through its investment in Beaverton, Ore.-based Kryptiq. Surescripts’s new Clinical Interoperability Services when combined with Kryptiq’s clinical messaging technology, will allow the company to offer three options to electronic health record vendors, health systems, health information exchanges and the physicians they serve.

“What this subscription messaging service promises is an affordable pathway for doctors to meet several of the criteria for meaningful use without disruption of office workflows and with assurance of reliability equal to that which they already expect with e-prescribing exchanges,” commented David C. Kibbe, MD, senior advisor at the American Academy of Family Physicians.

The three options the service will offer are:

1. Net2Net Connect will allow health systems and technology vendors that already support clinical information sharing within their network to connect to Surescripts in order to receive and send clinical information outside their network. This new service will be available in Dec. 2010.
2. Message Stream will provide secure messaging tools for health systems and technology vendors to enable their physicians to electronically exchange clinical information. This will also be available in Dec. 2010.
3. Clinical Message Portal will be for providers that today do not have an EHR system to send and receive clinical messages. The new service will be available in Jan. 2011.

“Healthcare information exchange enables clinicians to coordinate care, improving quality, safety, and efficiency,” said John Halamka, MD, chief information officer of Harvard Medical School and Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center. “Surescripts is accelerating connectivity by leveraging their existing e-prescribing network to provide novel data exchanges among providers.”

A two-year technology pilot at Minute Clinic, a subsidiary of CVS Caremark and the largest provider of retail medical clinics in the United States, has been testing the clinical messaging technology. Surescripts is already linked with over 500 CVS Caremark MinuteClinic sites across 26 states. Launched in November of 2008, the service has grown to where MinuteClinic nurse practitioners are today using the Surescripts network to share thousands of patient summaries with their patient’s physicians each month.

“Patients receive care in different settings and, as a result, their information must be able to follow them wherever they go,” said Troy Brennan, MD, chief medical officer of CVS Caremark. “Each and every time that MinuteClinic shares information via the Surescripts network with a patient’s medical home, it improves the continuity of care.”

The Surescripts network will remain complementary to current EHR, HIE and health system networks by allowing them to connect to a national backbone that, in turn, can connect them with any other network.

“The Surescripts initiative is consistent with plans of the Department of Veteran Affairs to add implementation of the Nationwide Health Information Network Direct capability, to the Virtual Lifetime Electronic Record portfolio,” said Roger Baker, assistant secretary for information and technology for the Department of Veterans Affairs. “Our intention is to facilitate secure, standards-based health information exchanges between VA and the private sector. A large number of Veterans receive some portion of their care from community providers and this initiative will assist us in improving the continuity of care for our Veterans.”

Source   :    http://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/surescripts-goes-beyond-erx-share-clinical-health-information

Tags: Certified Prescription, E-Prescription, Electronic Prescription, eRx, SureScripts
Posted November 2, 2010 by admin under E-Prescription, EMR, Electronic Prescription

The Obama administration used about half of a 50-page report on innovations targeted by the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act to underscore the importance of health and medical IT to the nation’s economic future.

The stimulus legislation, passed in February 2009, was designed to jumpstart the economy.

In presenting the report, Vice President Joe Biden, who was put in charge of seeing that billions of economic stimulus dollars reached its targets, highlighted how the funding is helping drive the use of electronic health records, E Prescription and the use of mobile devices to link remote patients and providers.

For instance, of the $2 billion spending for the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT, $250 million is funding 15 “Beacon” communities to showcase how health IT in combination with other systems can produce better health outcomes.

“These pilot communities will serve as examples to others in how to use health IT to make marked and sustainable improvements in health care quality, safety and efficiency,” according to the report.

The report cited the Southern Piedmont Community Care Plan in Concord, N.C., which is using its $15.7 million of its Beacon award to increase the number of patients with healthy blood pressure levels and to reduce the number of children with asthma who end up in the emergency room.

The award will pay for electronic health record management and telemedicine equipment as well as development of an indexed image database that will cut down on the number – and costs – of unnecessary X-rays.

Another community cited in the report, the Western New York Clinical Information Exchange, is applying its grant to acquire clinical decision support tools, such as registries, point-of-care alerts and new telemedicine systems to improve the control of blood sugar and other levels of diabetic patients.

Its goal is to reduce avoidable hospital admissions and emergency room visits.

The stimulus will also fund about $18 billion in incentives to encourage healthcare providers to purchase electronic health records systems starting in 2011 through 2015.

Source    :   http://www.govhealthit.com/newsitem.aspx?tid=77&nid=74514

Tags: Certified Prescription, E-Prescription, EHR, electronic health records, Electronic Prescription, eRx, meaningful use ehr, meaningful use of ehr, SureScripts
Posted October 26, 2010 by admin under E-Prescription, EHR, Electronic Prescription

The latest audit of electronic prescription activity in all 50 states reports that one of every three physicians, nurse practitioners and physician assistants in the United State is e-prescribing.

At the fifth annual Safe-Rx Awards in September, held for the first time at the U.S. Capitol, Surescripts, the nation’s largest e-prescribing network, announced that Massachusetts ranked first for e-prescribing activity. In that state, 57% of prescribers could do so electronically, and 32% of eligible prescriptions were sent electronically in 2009. Awards are given to the top 10 states with the most e-prescribing activity.

Massachusetts was followed by Michigan and Rhode Island. Three states — Hawaii, Indiana and Florida — joined the list for the first time in the eighth, ninth and 10th spots, respectively.

States were ranked on three factors: percentage of E Prescription, electronic use of medication history and electronic use of prescription benefits information. This meant that a state with a higher percentage of electronic prescriptions could rank lower than a state with fewer electronic prescriptions, depending on their performance in the other measures.

Paul Uhrig, chief administrative officer for Surescripts, said that because the audit is more comprehensive, this year’s rankings can serve as a proxy for states’ readiness to meet the federal government’s “meaningful use” requirements.

Meaningful use requirements are a set of criteria pertaining to the use of electronic medical records that physicians must meet to qualify for Medicare or Medicaid bonuses starting in 2011.

At the September event, David Blumenthal, MD, the national health information technology coordinator, said two core meaningful use objectives relate to e-prescribing: maintenance of an active medication list and the electronic transmission of prescriptions.

In addition, physicians must chose five objectives from a list of 10 to focus on. Two that involve e-prescribing — drug formulary checks and medication reconciliation — are on that list.

Uhrig said the information in the state rankings will give the government a sense of how effective its resources have been in terms of driving meaningful use of EMR systems. “Whether it’s a redeployment of resources or a refocus or a different use of resources … you can perhaps reprioritize at a higher level based on what’s happening with e-prescribing,” he said.

Surescripts Annual Progress Report, separate from the Safe-Rx Award rankings, showed widespread growth in e-prescribing. In 2009, 47 states more than doubled their use of prescription routing, and 39 more than doubled their use of prescription benefit information. About 200,000 office-based prescribers now use e-prescribing.

The report showed that the number of physicians using e-prescribing tools tied to an EMR has risen in recent years, another indication that e-prescribing rates can be closely tied to EMR use. Currently, 77% of e-prescribers use an EMR to prescribe, up from 54% at the end of 2007.

Source  :    http://www.ama-assn.org/amednews/2010/10/11/bisc1011.htm

Tags: Certified Prescription, E-Prescription, Electronic Prescription, eRx, SureScripts
Posted October 18, 2010 by admin under E-Prescription, EHR, EMR, Electronic Prescription

The use of e-prescribing nearly tripled last year, but still only accounts for the minority of prescription transactions in the U.S., according to a new report.

In 2009, of the 1.63 billion prescriptions written in the U.S., 190 million prescriptions — or 12% — took place electronically, according to the results of an annual audit of e-prescribing usage conducted by Surescripts, which operates the largest e-prescribing network in the U.S Still, the total e-prescriptions in 2009 climbed significantly from the 68 million and 29 million, respectively, that took place in 2008 and 2007.

Approximately 200,000 U.S. clinicians, or about 1-in-3 office-based physician, nurse practitioner, and physician assistant in the U.S., used e-prescribing at least once a month last year, according to Surescripts.

With the federal government’s push for the adoption and meaningful use of health IT, Surescripts projects that e-prescriptions will grow to 300 million in 2010, said a spokesman.

The U.S. Health and Humans Services Department’s “stage one” meaningful use criteria–for which healthcare providers can become eligible for financial rewards — includes several objectives that are supported by e-prescribing systems.

Those objectives include maintaining active patient medication lists; generating and transmitting permissible prescription electronically; implementing drug formulary checks; and performing medication reconciliation between care settings

In addition to evaluating usage of e-prescribing systems to transmit patient drug orders to pharmacies, Surescript’s audit this year also for the first time evaluated usage of two important E prescription functionalities — confirming patient’s prescription insurance eligibility prior to sending the order and electronically cross referencing patient’s medication history with pharmacies and payers.

With those new audit measures in mind, Surescripts also ranked e-prescription usage in each state. Massachusetts ranked first among states in e-prescribing, with 11 million prescriptions sent electronically by Bay State clinicians in 2009, representing about 32.3% of all prescriptions that were processed in the state.

Source     :     http://www.informationweek.com/news/healthcare/EMR/showArticle.jhtml?articleID=227500351&queryText=ePrescribing

Tags: Certified Prescription, E-Prescription, Electronic Prescription, eRx, SureScripts
Posted October 8, 2010 by admin under E-Prescription, Electronic Prescription

WASHINGTON – Massachusetts ranks first in the nation when it comes to the use of electronic prescribing, announced officials Tuesday at the Fifth Annual Safe-Rx Awards held on Capitol Hill. Nationwide the number of physicians using e-prescribing has grown to 200,000.

“To argue that there are 200,000 physicians e‑prescribing is really reassuring,” said David Blumenthal, MD, national coordinator for health information technology, who was the keynote speaker at the awards. “We, however, have a long way to go. Two hundred thousand is probably about a third of the practicing physicians in the United States. And it’s that two‑thirds that we are concerned about and making sure that they have the tools, incentives, the rewards for becoming e‑prescribers in the very near future.”

The Safe-Rx Awards recognize the top ten states based on a ranking that measures their actual use of e-prescribing. A Safe-Rx Evangelist Award is also given to a single person or organization whose work has made an extraordinary impact on the awareness and use of e-prescribing as a critical means of reducing medication errors. This year’s recipient was Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI).

“I’m honored to receive this award today from Surescripts,” said Whitehouse. “I’ve fought for widespread adoption of electronic prescribing because I’ve seen the results in my home state of Rhode Island, the first state to achieve 100 percent pharmacy adoption of this technology. E-prescribing reduces cost and increases quality of care, and I’ll continue working to make it available nationwide.”

Surescripts CEO Harry Totonis presented awards to the top 10 states with the highest rate of e-prescribing:

1.  Massachusetts
2.  Michigan
3.  Rhode Island
4.  Delaware
5.  North Carolina
6.  Connecticut
7.  Pennsylvania
8.  Hawaii*
9.  Indiana*
10. Florida*

*New to the top 10

“Six of [the top ten states] had been recipients of our Beacon Award Program, which is a way of saying that e‑prescribing is a gateway into success along a whole range of electronic and health care performances because our Beacon Program really was about healthcare improvement through electronic systems, rather than about electronic systems,” noted Blumenthal in his speech.

Beginning with this year’s awards, Surescripts applied a new, more comprehensive method for ranking states’ use of e-prescribing – one that measures the use of three critical steps: electronically confirming a patient’s prescription benefit information prior to sending the E Prescription; electronically cross-referencing a patient’s medication history with pharmacies and payers; and electronically routing a prescription to the patient’s choice of pharmacy.

The new ranking method and associated statistics represent an opportunity for healthcare and policy leaders to track meaningful use of electronic health records. Because prescription benefit, medication history and prescription routing assist in supporting at least four meaningful uses of an electronic health record, Surescripts’s state statistics and ranking can now serve as a valuable proxy for tracking state and national progress against the administration’s health IT agenda.

“E-prescribing is just the first step in the nation’s plan for health information technology, and it is only one component of an electronic health record,” said Totonis. “Surescripts is committed to helping these same communities build a more efficient, secure and reliable means of sharing a broader set of health information such as lab results and doctors’ notes. This will not be easy, but neither was convincing the first 200,000 physicians to get rid of their prescription pads. Our experience tells us that, working together, health information technology can and will continue to drive meaningful improvements in care.”

Source   :   http://www.healthcareitnews.com/news/surescripts-awards-top-10-states-erx-use?page=0,0

Tags: Certified Prescription, E-Prescription, Electronic Prescription, eRx, SureScripts
Posted September 30, 2010 by admin under E-Prescription, Electronic Prescription

The number of office-based U.S. health care professionals who use electronic prescription systems has increased significantly in recent years, according to data released Tuesday by electronic prescribing network operator Surescripts, Reuters reports.

Charting E-Prescription Adoption

According to Surescripts, about 200,000 office-based prescribers — or about one-third of office-based health care workers — currently use e-prescribing systems. The latest figure is up from 156,000 e-prescribers at the end of 2009 and 74,000 at the end of 2008.

Surescripts noted that 47 states more than doubled their use of e-prescribing last year.

Massachusetts has the highest rate of  E-Prescription use, at 57%.

Federal Incentives Providing Impetus

The recent increase in e-prescribing could stem from federal incentives designed to reward health care providers who demonstrate “meaningful use” of electronic health records, Reuters reports.

The incentives, which were included in the 2009 federal economic stimulus package, are expected to encourage even more health care providers to switch to e-prescribing systems over the coming years (Steenhuysen, Reuters, 9/21).

Source   :    http://www.ihealthbeat.org/articles/2010/9/21/report-eprescribing-increasing-among-us-health-care-workers.aspx

Tags: Certified Prescription, E-Prescription, Electronic Prescription, eRx
Posted September 24, 2010 by admin under E-Prescription, Electronic Prescription