About 7,000 deaths occur each year in the U.S. due to medication errors. These errors are predominately due to illegible handwriting on prescriptions, incorrect dosing, and missed drug and allergy reactions. With over 3 billion prescriptions written annually, a huge opportunity exists to streamline the prescribing and dispensing process.
ePrescribing is simply an electronic way to generate prescriptions through an automated data-entry process utilizing ePrescribing software and a transmission network which links to participating pharmacies.
Benefits of ePrescribing:
- Access - physician has electronic access to patient eligibility, benefit, formulary, and prescription history information at the point of care to help make the most appropriate clinical and financial decisions for the member.
- Safety - drug-to-drug interaction, drug allergy, and appropriate dosing information (based on the patient's medication history) is shared with physicians at the time of prescribing to help with prescribing decisions in order to prevent any adverse drug events for the member.
- Convenience - script is sent electronically directly to retail pharmacy so member can go directly and pick it up.
RightSourceRx(sm) receives between 6-7 percent of all prescriptions electronically, saving members time and money.
Key industry stats for ePrescribing:
- 156,000 active ePrescribers
- 78% use of EMR vs. 22% stand-alone ePrescribing tool
- Out of 61,000 pharmacies, 97% are certified for electronic scripts
- 47,000 pharmacies are connected for eRx routing
- (97% chains/62% independents)
- 190 million electronic prescription transactions
Source
- Advancing Healthcare In America 2009 National Progress Report On E-Prescribing
- (0.4 MB) Download PDF
- English
Humana Pharmacy Solutions has partnered with Availity to drive the adoption of electronic prescribing by offering a no-cost ePrescribing solution to our high-prescribing physicians in Kentucky, Florida and Texas. Through this service, Humana-network physicians can do the following:
- Transmit prescriptions electronically to retail and mail-order pharmacies, including RightSourceRx
- Authorize refills in seconds without faxes and phone calls
- Access patient medication history across prescribers
- Review drug and allergy interaction alerts
- Select lower-cost, therapeutically appropriate alternatives
- View important prior authorization requirements
Over 2000 physicians are utilizing the system and over 580,000 new scripts have been written in 2010.
