Surescripts sets national plan to offer medication histories

Access to patients’ med data could aid care, population health, says Christopher DiBlasi.


Surescripts, which operates a national electronic prescribing network, now offers a medication history service to physicians, which will enable more effective population health management, it contends.

Upon request, Surescripts will integrate histories for a provider’s patient panel through the provider’s electronic health record, population health management or analytics vendor, among others. Histories also can be integrated directly into a clinical data warehouse to support analytics.

“We clean the data before presenting it and format data using industry standards,” says Christopher DiBlasi, a product manager at Surescripts. Outreach to providers to inform them of the service primarily will be through their information systems vendors, he adds. 12-month views of medication history are updated nightly.

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The service initially provides a single connection to medication histories from 14 nationwide pharmacies totaling 28,000 pharmacy locations, as well as two pharmacy benefit management firms; US Scripts is one of the PBMs, but the second has not yet been identified.



Eleven of the 14 nationwide pharmacies have identified themselves. They include Albertsons (including ACME Markets, Jewel-Osco, Safeway and Vons); Best Rx; KeyCentrix; Lagniappe; PioneerRX, QS/1; Rite Aid, Rx30; Thrifty White Pharmacy; US Script; and Walgreens.

The new service, called Medication History for Panel Management, enables providers to upload their patient population data to a secure site. Surescripts will validate the data and uniquely identify each patient and request medication history from participating data suppliers—pharmacies and PBMs. The suppliers are expected to send medication histories for each patient to Surescripts, which will consolidate and format data and transmit the file to a secure site for the provider to download.

Pharmacy Fill and PBM data available includes patient name, date of birth, gender, address and phone number. Medication data includes name, quantity dispensed, days of supply, date filled, date picked up, refills, and directions for taking the medication.

PBM claims data available includes patient data such as name, date of birth, gender, address, phone and cardholder ID. Medication data includes the National Drug Code, drug name, dosage, quantity dispensed, fill date, and approval or denial. Prescriber data includes name, DEA number, national provider identifier and phone number. Pharmacy data includes name and phone number.

Also See: Surescripts Expands e-Prescribing Service Network

The medication history service is part of the evolution of Surescripts from its initial e-prescribing network to offering medication history to hospitals to support medication reconciliation, and now to support physicians’ journey to population health. “This level and quality of data hasn’t been available this easily before,” he adds.

The nation has about 65,000 pharmacies, and Surescripts anticipates rapid participation by many drug stores and pharmacy benefit management firms.

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