Content about e-prescribing

CVS Caremark will launch a pilot of a 
real-time, integrated electronic prior authorization capability, available to its pharmacy benefit management clients, to help speed access to prescription medications.


NEW YORK — Bills introduced in the legislatures of nearly a dozen states have pharmacy benefit managers and the generic drug industry fearing that the bills could lead to limits on doctors’ abilities to prescribe generics through e-prescribing.

The Pharmaceutical Care Management Association, the main lobby for PBMs, said the bills would prohibit doctors from seeing lower-cost drug options, including generics and preferred brands; would prevent the e-prescribing software from showing safety information; and would disallow lower-cost pharmacy options.

NEW ORLEANS Opening another front in its long campaign to extend electronic prescribing and health information technology throughout the United States, e-prescribing platform provider Surescripts said Monday that it will expand its nationwide e-prescribing network to accelerate the digital transformation of the nation’s healthcare system by enabling the electronic exchange of all types of clinical information.

WHAT IT MEANS AND WHY IT'S IMPORTANT Since the turn of the 21st century, community pharmacy and its technology allies have waged a long fight to shift the nation’s fractious healthcare system to a common communications and record-keeping platform via electronic prescribing and information technology. Those efforts -- led by such companies as Surescripts, the pharmacy industry-founded e-prescribing network -- have made progress.

DETROIT In honor of its dedication to driving the adoption of e-prescribing technology in Michigan, the Southeast Michigan ePrescribing Initiative was presented with the 2010 Health Information Technology Innovation Leadership Award at the first annual Michigan HIT Leadership and Innovation Awards reception.

WASHINGTON Capping a decade-long -– and ultimately victorious -– battle by pharmacy and technology interests to modernize all facets of the prescription prescribing and dispensing process, the Drug Enforcement Administration has struck down legal impediments to the electronic prescribing of controlled substances.

WHAT IT MEANS AND WHY IT'S IMPORTANT Efforts by retail pharmacies and pharmacy groups to spur the adoption of electronic-prescribing technology among the nation’s technology-averse physicians are nothing new. Nor are collaborative campaigns that enlist pharmacies and technology vendors. But a joint campaign to speed e-prescribing by a pharmacy benefits manager and a health insurer? That’s a far less frequent occurrence.

WHAT IT MEANS AND WHY IT'S IMPORTANT Relative to the national chains, independent pharmacies have limited resources and, given the importance and benefit of e-prescribing, further helping to facilitate the adoption of e-prescribing via grants — not to mention facilitating two-way communication between prescribers and pharmacists — is critical to help push overall adoption closer to the finish line.

NEW YORK The United States has long been a laggard in healthcare information technology, but the country lately has undergone a Cambrian explosion of e-prescribing, as numbers from Walgreens and the e-prescribing network Surescripts demonstrate. The $19 billion that the federal stimulus package offers as an incentive to adopt HIT likely will accelerate the trend.