e-Prescribing incentives

Discussion in 'Feature: Requests and Planning' started by Graham, Oct 20, 2008.

  1. Graham

    Graham Developer Staff Member

    Medicare is promising a 2% incentive for 2009, and 2010 for physicians who use a qualified e-prescribing method.

    I looked at Surescripts in 2006, and there is a considerable amount of work involved in implementing e-prescribing. And there was no interest from users.

    Has that changed?

    I think users who want this would have to contribute to the costs .. eg. one EMR charges $500 per annum for e-prescribing capabilities.
  2. Jason

    Jason Developer / Handyman Staff Member

    (1) $500/year would be major ROI ! Certainly a great deal.


    (2) We still need to finish up making Synapse the fastest Prescribing EMR. As I ramp up my Synapse RXing, I'll keep my eye open for efficiencies.
  3. Graham

    Graham Developer Staff Member

    Are there any US based physicians in testing e-prescribing?

    I haven't started writing any code yet ... need to guage interest.
  4. Graham

    Graham Developer Staff Member

    Two so far ... I can probably start.
  5. qilin

    qilin Member

    count me in
  6. Graham

    Graham Developer Staff Member

    three total so far.

  7. Graham

    Graham Developer Staff Member

    Currently Synapse stores the medication name, dose, and instructions. It does not store explicitly the amount dispensed, and nor does it store the form of the drug eg. tablet, unless you include it in the name.

    E-prescribing requires that you specify the drug form, and the amount dispensed as a numeric value. The period of days can also be sent.

    If we store all that, then doing a repeat is simpler as we can click on a drug name, and it automatically fills in all the other data.
  8. Jerry

    Jerry Administrator Staff Member


    I would like to be a beta tester as well.

    Would it be possible to store the pharmacy name that the prescription was faxed to? It's often important to see exactly when and where a prescription was faxed/eRx'd or called to when checking up on narcotic prescriptions. Unless I missed something, I don't think synapse currently stores the pharmacy name.
  9. Graham

    Graham Developer Staff Member

    Yes, all of this data would be stored with an eprescription.

    You're already in my list of 3 beta testers!
  10. Graham

    Graham Developer Staff Member

    Because of the requirements of eprescribing, I will need to add more fields to the add-medication windows.

    Since most prescriptions are refills for existing patients, I guess we can try and optimize the process for refills vs. new medications.
  11. Graham

    Graham Developer Staff Member

    Eprescribing means that measures are codified.

    This uses the SCRIPT protocol.

    Here's some examples

    UT Inhalation
    Y8 Inhalation(s)
    IH Inhaler

    more complexity over a process designed to reduce errors I guess.
  12. Graham

    Graham Developer Staff Member

    Still thinking thru how to do this best so that we can still add medications quickly.

    Let's consider an Rx for some injector pens.

    Our prescription has to specify the number of items. There are perhaps 3 pens in a box. So, the unit of measure is not one pen, but one box, or 3 pack.

    Or some ointment. The size is 25 g, the unit of measure is a tube.

    So, it appears we need to, when we add a medication, specify also the unit of measure, and the amount to be dispensed. Clearly this needs to be optional for those recording meds prescribed by someone else.
  13. Jason

    Jason Developer / Handyman Staff Member

    Certainly if this was done by Medication Favo(u)rites this could be typed in once and used again and again.

  14. Jason

    Jason Developer / Handyman Staff Member

    One idea might be to make a "e-prescribing only" app for the doctor's on paper that want to transition to e-prescribing.



  15. Graham

    Graham Developer Staff Member

    Allscripts already provide one for free .. but no way to interface to any emr other than theirs.
  16. Jason

    Jason Developer / Handyman Staff Member

    I wonder how good it is.
  17. Graham

    Graham Developer Staff Member

  18. Graham

    Graham Developer Staff Member

    The API is intended for use by applications developing an e-prescribing interface.

    This means I could use their database and query it each time for drug information. So, it will be slower than as we have now .. but continuously updated.

    Just need to see if I can extract all the information I need for the Surescripts interface.
  19. Jerry

    Jerry Administrator Staff Member

    Might it be possible to deliver the results of queries to their database to a cache and let the user decide when to query their database to update drug information?
  20. Graham

    Graham Developer Staff Member

    Sure .. that would be a later optimization. But it seems pretty fast based on some initial testing.

Share This Page