Best Practices: Acquiring and Implementing E-Prescribing

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By using an electronic medical record system or e-prescribing application certified to connect to the Surescripts network, practices can experience dramatic efficiency gains and enhanced patient safety.

Improve the Safety and Accuracy of the Prescribing Process.

   1   Assess your practice’s readiness for e-prescribing. If your practice uses an Electronic Health Record (EHR) system, determine if it can be enabled for e-prescribing via the Surescripts network. Click here to find a list of technologies certified to connect to the Surescripts network.
 
   2   If you do not yet have e-prescribing EHR software in your practice, find out if you can get assistance with acquiring e-prescribing technology. Review a list of state and national e-prescribing programs by clicking here.
 
   3   Set a clear vision and objectives for what you hope to accomplish through e-prescribing and communicate this within the practice.
 
   4   Implement and use all e-prescribing services to achieve greatest benefit. This includes prescription benefit, prescription history, and prescription routing (bi-directional).

a. To be eligible for Medicare incentive payments under MIPAA, prescribers must be using all of these e-prescribing services
b. Using prescription benefit information will ensure selected medications are covered by the patient’s drug coverage, meet therapeutic guidelines and are cost-effective.
c. Bi-directional prescription routing enables automating of prescription renewals which reduces phone calls and faxes to the practice and saves prescriber and staff time while ensuring better patient service. Be sure to check the system regularly throughout the day and always respond within 24 hours. It is helpful to assign this responsibility to an individual in the practice
   5   Avoid batching or queuing prescriptions before sending them to the pharmacies electronically. This reduces the chance of the patient arriving at the pharmacy before the prescription is ready.
 
   6   Follow DEA regulations and refrain from sending controlled substance prescriptions electronically. Do not approve prescription renewal requests for controlled substances that are sent electronically.
 
   7   Think through workflow changes; understand how prescriber and staff roles and responsibilities may change when automating medication management.
 
   8   Integrate patient demographic information from practice management system into the e-prescribing application

a. Most vendors can do this
b. There may be a fee
c. It is likely worth the cost because if you have to handle manually it is time consuming and creates a barrier to using e-prescribing
 
   9   Designate a practice expert for e-prescribing. That staff member, by becoming increasingly adept at using the electronic prescribing system, will elicit additional value from your investment by making the process run more smoothly.
 
   10   Ensure complete and effective training.

a. Pace yourself
b. Consider decreasing patient load when first implementing
c. Learn how to access and use prescription benefit information such as eligibility and formulary, as well prescription history information
d. Learn how to generate new prescriptions and respond to electronic renewal requests

Download a printable PDF version of this information here