Hey, does anyone know anything about this? Like, where are the
technical specs?
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From: American Academy of Family Physicians <swaldren@aafp.org>
Date: Tue, 04 Mar 2008
Subject: CMS Regulatory Changes Affecting Your Prescribing
To: xxxxx
Dear Dr xxxxx
Are you aware of changes to the Medicare Modernization Act (MMA) Part D
regulations that may impact the way you prescribe?
If your practice currently prepares and submits prescriptions to pharmacies
using an Electronic Medical Record (EMR), it is likely your EMR is
generating faxes that arrive on paper at the pharmacy’s fax machine. If so,
you won’t be in compliance with new regulations effective January 1,
2009 that require prescriptions for Medicare Part D be transmitted
electronically and not by computer-generated fax.
Find out whether your EMR is capable of establishing an e-prescribing
connection with pharmacies with a free E-Prescribing Readiness
Assessment<http://www.aafp.org/cgi-bin/emailredirector.pl?url_id=3138&email_recipient_id=xxxxx>.
This web site is provided by the AAFP in collaboration with leading medical
societies. The site will also help you request pharmacy connectivity from
your EMR vendor, and understand the benefits of e-prescribing if you haven’t
yet invested in an EMR.
Sincerely,
Steven Waldren, MD
Director, AAFP Center for Health Information Technology
You received this email as an AAFP member.
BTW I have substituted xxxxx in three places to protect my client’s
privacy.
It’s one of those things that will be for sure pushed forward.
I’ve done a survey with the local pharmacies, and those are not big chains,
have no clue or are recently starting to think about it.
but it will happen sooner or later, and be mandatory for all
there are few strategies here.
1./
contact surescritps, the one and only clearing house for e-prescriptions in the USA.
it’s a corp created by the pharmacy industry, and there’s no other option.
there’s a need to sign an NDA, (I am in the process) although they claim the implementation is fully based on industy standards.
develop and test a client that connects to them.
2./
contact one of the may that have built products on top of surescrispts.
some (doubtfully) may provide easier apis to run through surescripts.
but don’t be fooled, they all connect to surescripts at some point.
bottom line, any emr will need an abstraction to send and receive data to surescripts.
indeed, a pain in there,
I recently assisted a local presentation where all were set to wow the presenters,
an array of different surescript vendors including themselves,
they weren’t happy to see an open-sourcist asking questions.
but the un-happy reality is that there’s a pragmatic need to evaluate trade-offs.
one is possible developing the client and requesting a subsequent nda from downloaders to use it.
other is providing a compiled module, and request the nda for the source.
is sad, is wrong, but nobody will hear.
Surescript uses EDIFACT as shown in the following picture: http://www.surescripts.com/images/imp_guide.jpg
(taken from http://www.surescripts.com/TechCompany/imp-guide.aspx)
We are going to set up an EDIFACT solution for the Dutch market (secure email to referrers; electronic prescriptions). I think it would make sense to cooperate on the EDIFACT solution on both sides of the Atlantic. Any volunteers?
Hello,
We want to evaluate link with Surescripts. I see that you were developing an EDIFACT solution for the Dutch market. Any progress. Can you share your experiences and the codes.
e-prescribing is a part of the certification project. Please contact Sam for more info.
For general information, you can email me. I have implemented e-prescribing for another client and will be happy to share non-confidential info. There is an alternative.
