Best Practices
We applaud your decision to establish an electronic
prescribing connection between your practice, payers and
pharmacies. E-prescribing can help your practice achieve new
levels of prescription safety and efficiency.
We are pleased to present the following best practices to
help you achieve the full benefit of e-prescribing:
| 1 |
Implement and use
all e-prescribing services to achieve greatest
benefit. This includes prescription benefit,
prescription history, and prescription routing
(bi-directional). a. To be eligible for Medicare incentive payments under MIPAA, prescribers must be using all of these e-prescribing services. b. Using prescription benefit information will ensure selected medications are covered by the patient’s drug coverage, meet therapeutic guidelines and are cost-effective. c. Bi-directional prescription routing enables automating of prescription renewals which reduces phone calls and faxes to the practice and saves prescriber and staff time while ensuring better patient service. Be sure to check the system regularly throughout the day and always respond within 24 hours. It is helpful to assign this responsibility to an individual in the practice. |
| 2 |
Avoid batching or
queuing prescriptions before sending them to the
pharmacies electronically. This reduces the
chance of the patient arriving at the pharmacy
before the prescription is ready. |
| 3 |
Follow DEA
regulations and refrain from sending controlled
substance prescriptions electronically. Do not
approve prescription renewal requests for
controlled substances that are sent
electronically. |
| 4 |
Designate a
practice expert for e-prescribing. That staff
member, by becoming increasingly adept at using
the electronic prescribing system, will elicit
additional value from your investment by making
the process run more smoothly. |
| 5 |
Encourage
independent pharmacies in your area to become
enabled for e-prescribing, particularly patient
favorites. A letter template has been developed
to help you with pharmacy outreach.
Click here
to access this document. |
| 6 |
Inform your
e-prescribing software vendor of any technical
issues through their support process. If a
patient shows up in a pharmacy and is told the
prescription is not there, please report these
cases so technical issues can be identified and
pharmacy staff can be re-trained if necessary.
If you receive fax prescription refill requests
from connected pharmacies, please report these
cases so corrections can be made to the pharmacy
database on prescribers.
Click here for
additional information on how to handle faxed
renewal requests. |
| 7 |
Orient patients to
e-prescribing. a. Ensure they understand that it is safer and more efficient. b. Ensure they come prepared with their preferred pharmacy. c. Direct them to call the pharmacy rather than the practice for prescription renewals. d. Consider using signage, recorded phone messages, patient reminder cards to reinforce the message. Click here for more information on patient education materials. |
For additional information on e-prescribing implementation best practices, please download the Clinician’s Guide to E-Prescribing.
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