There is no doubt that many healthcare providers feel they were left out of the game when it comes to meaningful use (MU). However, none is more glaring than the omission of the pharmacist, a major league “all star” player that has improved the cost and quality of care for more than 30 years.
We wrote the playbooks on collaboration, transformation
While the pharmacy industry operates distinctly differently than the medical side of healthcare, it is nonetheless an important part of healthcare. The pharmacy industry has been a mainstay in a lesser known, decades-long movement to adopt information technology to improve efficiency, coordination of care and patient safety. Through the collaborative and consensus-building process of its not-for-profit, ANSI-accredited standards development organization, the National Council for Prescription Drug Programs (NCPDP), representatives from pharmacies, health plans, payers and technology vendors lay aside business interests and competitive boundaries to improve the pharmacy care delivery system and protect patient safety.
The transformation has provided the pharmacy industry with a real-time framework at the point of service, enabled by the NCPDP Telecommunication Standard, which was released more than 20 years ago. Both pharmacies and patients benefit – pharmacies know within seconds a patient’s eligibility, copay and how much the pharmacy would be paid for a claim, and pharmacists receive instant clinical alerts on potential allergies, drug/drug interactions and more.
Show me the money!
Pharmacy stakeholders stepped up to the plate to embrace technology on their own dime. And e-prescribing is no exception. Despite the nearly non-existent requirement for e-prescribing in MU prior to 2011, it provides immediate benefits to all stakeholders and establishes an important communication channel between providers and pharmacists.
A pharmacy industry innovation, e-prescribing eliminates errors associated with interpreting handwritten prescriptions and dispensing similar-sounding or-looking drug names. It also increases the likelihood of compliance by adding the convenience factor for patients who otherwise may not want to drop off a prescription and wait around for it to be filled. With such huge payoffs for physicians, pharmacists and patients, pharmacists are the ones footing the bill for e-prescribing with transaction fees that can cost upwards of $0.20 per e-prescription, while physicians are being incentivized to be meaningful users of e-prescribing.
John Klimek is senior vice president, industry information technology with the National Council for Prescription Drug Programs (NCPDP). His main objective at NCPDP is to work with industry leaders in healthcare to achieve interoperability among the healthcare standards, which will ultimately increase healthcare efficiencies and safety.
