WHY: Patients can jump around from physician to physician and pick up extra prescriptions. Health Information Exchanges (HIEs) and electronic prescriptions (e-prescriptions) can reduce these excessive prescriptions from being written.
Health Information Exchange
Promotion of HIE expansion/adoption would allow physicians to see that a recent prescription already exists, even if the patient is seeing a physician at a different facility.
Currently
Many resources provide healthcare organizations and individual healthcare providers guidance on considerations when forming or joining a HIE: HealthIT.gov, the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), and the Electronic Healthcare Network Accreditation Commission (EHNAC) accreditation guidelines
More information can be found here.
HIE demand driven by:
- Meaningful use requirements
- New payment approaches that stress care coordination
- Federal financial incentives
E-Prescriptions and PDMPs
E-prescribing and Prescription Drug Monitoring Programs (PDMPs) connect physicians with pharmacists, allowing them to track and monitor how and when patients fill prescriptions. Expanding these tools will allow clinicians to catch more misuse activity.
Currently
- PDMPs are electronic databases that track prescribing and dispensing of controlled substances, such as prescription stimulants.
- E-prescribing gives physicians the option to electronically transmit prescriptions.
Both PDMPs and e-prescribing allow physicians to obtain information on individuals’ prescription drug use, and allow pharmacists and law enforcement to follow the prescribing behavior of health professionals.
In 2010, the DEA implemented the Electronic Prescriptions for Controlled Substances (EPCS), allowing e-prescribing for schedule II-IV controlled substances
Triplicate Prescription Programs (TPPs) is another strategy that requires physicians to issue prescriptions for certain controlled substances using multiple copy forms, with the extra copies either retained for record-keeping purposes or submitted to monitoring agencies. Some states implemented TPPs as precursors to PDMPs