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What is Surescripts Medication History for Acute Settings service?

Surescripts' Medication History for Acute Settings service allows prescribers and authorized staff in acute settings to query and receive aggregated details for up to a year's worth of patient prescription history.

Surescripts certifies software & connectivity systems for access to the Prescription History for Acute service.  Incorporating our service within your software allows your clients to request patient prescription history from participating payers and pharmacies.

Currently, the service represents 220 million member records contained within the MPI or approximately 2.1 billion prescriptions with existing PBM and retail pharmacy participation.  This service / functionality was implemented in 2006 following the Joint Commission report on medication errors in hospitals and resulting focus on improving medication reconciliation and medication management.   The service provides access to real-time, combined pharmacy claims and pharmacy fill data for a patient and an accurate and longitudinal record of a patient's prescription history and adherence to their chronic medication regiment.

How does the Medication History for Acute service work?

Once a patient is matched to an available record, the requestor can receive up to a year of prescription history, including the name of drug, dosage, quantity dispensed, days supply and phone numbers of the prescribing physician. Having this information at your client's fingertips can provide new opportunities to save time and make better informed clinical decisions.

Why is the Medication History for Acute service needed?

Patients do not always remember all medications they are taking or the appropriate names of their medications which makes it difficult to determine past medication history. Specifically, the transition from the ambulatory setting to the acute care setting is fraught with confusion especially for medication management.

Patients who enter an acute care facility with a worsening of a chronic condition often represent medication non-compliance versus disease progression.

Surescripts Medication History Acute service can serve as a foundation for medication history reconciliation:

• At the time of acute care or ED admission
• At the points of transfer within a facility
• At discharge

What are some of the benefits of the Medication History for Acute Settings service?

Hospitals and other acute care facilities can utilize the Medication History for Acute service to securely access real-time patient medication history information for the purposes of medication reconciliation or medication management.  The data provides accurate name and dosage of past/current patient medications which helps reduce time spent on the medication reconciliation process.

In addition, the service supports drug-to-drug or drug-allergy interaction checks, and reduces the potential for drug duplication.  By providing access to more data, the service can support analysis of patient compliance with drug therapy, understanding of patient behavior, including frequency of prescription fills and numbers of physicians and pharmacies involved.

Benefits include:

• Improved patient safety
• Reduced Adverse Drug Events (ADEs)
• Better assessment of patient compliance with chronic medications
• Reduced hospital care costs
• Improved medication reconciliation process via consistent and reliable data from a trusted source

What does the Mediation History for Acute Settings service provide?

The Medication History for Acute Settings service provides an accurate and longitudinal record of a patient's medication history and adherence to their chronic medication regiment. Data provided by this service can identify:

• Name of drug
• Dosage
• Quantity dispensed
• Days supply
• Dispensing pharmacy
• Phone number of prescribing physician from the previous 12 months

How can my facility access the Medication History for Acute Settings service?

Hospitals and other acute care settings interesting in gaining access to this service should contact a technology vendor that has been certified for the service.  A list of certified vendors can be found here.

I’m a technology vendor interested in getting certified for Medication History for Acute service. Who should I contact?

If you are a technology vendor offering medication reconciliation services and would like to become certified for our Medication History for Acute service, please contact us to request additional information.

What steps does Surescripts take to ensure patient privacy and security?

During the admission process, patient consent and HIPAA notification are standard processes, especially for purposes of treatment, healthcare operations, or payment. All queries and responses are made automatically through secured system to system communications. The response is returned to a patient record in a clinical setting and role based security determines which personnel have access to the information. Surescripts also contractually requires all certified software vendors to follow local, state and federal level privacy and security requirements.