SureScripts

SureScripts was founded in 2001 by the National Association of Chain Drug Stores (NACDS) and the National Community Pharmacists Association (NCPA) to improve the quality, safety, and efficiency of the overall prescribing process. The SureScripts Electronic Prescribing Network is the largest network to link electronic communications between pharmacies and physicians, allowing the electronic exchange of prescription information.

Situation

The nation’s prescribing process presents four major challenges:

1. There is far too much time spent phoning and faxing to clarify prescriptions and authorize renewal requests;
   
2. Errors result from misread prescriptions or medications with similar-sounding names;
   
3. Physicians lack network-based access to medication history from a clinical source;
   
4. The tools available to physicians, pharmacists and patients for managing drug compliance are manual and severely limited.
   

The following numbers detail the issue:

• It is estimated that 80 percent of patients leave a physician’s office with a new prescription, with 30 percent of those prescriptions needing clarification.
• Of the approximately three billion prescriptions currently dispensed annually, as many as 450 million require authorization for additional renewals before they are dispensed – translating to more than 900 million phone calls and faxes between physicians and pharmacies.
• By implementing the proper information technology systems, each year 190,000 hospitalizations resulting from prescription errors and 2 million adverse drug reactions could be avoided, saving $44 billion annually.
• Industry experts estimate that up to 20 percent of all new prescriptions go unfilled and that the rate is much higher for prescription refills.
  

Solution

Over the past 30 months, SureScripts has established a neutral nationwide network for electronic prescribing by connecting the nation's numerous physician technology applications and pharmacy software systems, enabling physicians and pharmacists to communicate electronically.

As a result, new prescriptions are sent directly from the physician’s computer or PDA to the pharmacy computer – quickly, accurately and securely. Renewal authorizations can be reviewed and responded to in much less time than with phone or fax.

Better Health & Lower Costs

Over the past two years, the SureScripts network has experienced enormous growth:

• Pharmacy connectivity – from 50% to 90%
  
• Activated pharmacies – from 800 to 24,000+
  
• E-Rx capable physicians – from 7,800 to 150,000+
  
• Contracted solutions – from 20 to 85
  
• States live w/e-prescribing – from 5 to 47
  

Using the SureScripts two-way connection, more and more physicians and pharmacists across the nation are automating new prescription and refill requests by eliminating the need for various combinations of manual data entry, faxing and phone calls.

The impact of this transformation of the prescribing process comes to life when combined with data outlining the benefits of e-prescribing:

• Medication errors could be cut by 55 percent if physicians switched to writing electronic prescriptions, according to a report by The Institute for Safe Medicine Practices.
  
• Within three months of implementing a new e-prescribing platform and improved training procedures, inbound pharmacy calls fell 36 percent and outbound calls to manage renewals fell 50 percent, according to a study on the impact of electronic prescribing technology.
  
• Studies have shown that electronic prescribing systems like SureScripts can reduce administrative costs by as much as 60 percent.
  
• 82 percent of Americans prefer an electronic prescribing system that allows physicians to send prescriptions directly to community pharmacies.