Pharmacy Council Will Push E-Prescriptions

SureScripts Systems Inc., the developer of a transaction engine that's being tested in Rhode Island to route electronic prescriptions from physician offices to hundreds of pharmacies in the state, has formed the Chain Pharmacy Advisory Council.

The council, which includes 12 high-level executives from the country's largest drug retailers--including CVS, Walgreens, Brooks, Rite Aid, and Wal-Mart--will provide ongoing technical and other input with the goal of getting electronic prescriptions to catch on nationally.

SureScripts Messenger Services transaction engine provides secure connectivity of E-prescriptions between physicians and drugstores, as well as the format for those messages to be sent electronically. SureScripts recently kicked off a pilot project that lets 17 physician practices in Rhode Island send E-prescriptions to 82% of the hundreds of pharmacies in the state. In July, the pilot will be expanded so that pieces are in place for any of the state's 2,100 physicians to send electronic prescriptions to 90% of the state's pharmacies. By year's end, six or seven more regions in the country--most likely Massachusetts and Connecticut next--will also be part of the rollout. By the end of 2004, doctors and pharmacies in 10 regions in the country will be able to use the system.

SureScripts Messenger Services can link the drugstore chains' data centers via leased lines to SureScripts data center, which validates and routes the electronic prescriptions. Once a large chain such as CVS has those SureScripts capabilities set, it's up to the chain to "turn on" the access to the system at individual store locations, says SureScripts CEO Kevin Hutchinson. Members of the new council are advising SureScripts on the various technical needs of stores in various states and cities, as this national rollout is pursued. "We're providing feedback to work out any of the kinks," says Jim Smith, senior VP of health-care services at CVS and a member of the Chain Pharmacy Advisory Council.

The council is also helping to evaluate workflow changes that take place in pharmacies as they switch from paper-based and phone-in prescription systems to electronic processes.

On the doctor's end, physician office management or electronic medical records software can be used to write out and send the electronic prescriptions. SureScripts is also working with vendors of those software products to provide the specifications needed in the applications to use the SureScripts capabilities. Doctors can also use the Web to send the electronic prescriptions, although those transactions still require some manual data entry from the pharmacist's end, says CVS's Smith.

Hutchinson says that SureScripts also plans to create an advisory council made up of physicians and smaller, independent drugstores.