One of the most time-consuming and error-prone tasks for a Medical Assistant (MA) is entering the patient’s medications.
In addition, the patient often doesn’t remember what medications they are taking or fails to bring them to their visit.
According to a Pennsylvania study on medication reconciliation, “studies have shown that up to 91% of medication reconciliation errors are clinically significant and 1–2% are serious or potentially life-threatening.”
What is automated real-time medication reconciliation?
A: With automated real-time medication reconciliation, your EHR electronically sends the patient’s identifying information to Surescripts to retrieve all medications prescribed for the patient in the United States.
Who is Surescripts?
A: Per their website, “Surescripts is privately owned by the National Association of Chain Drug Stores (NACDS), National Community Pharmacists Association (NCPA), CVS Health, and Express Scripts.” Essentially the major pharmacies in the US created Surescripts years ago to have one system for ePrescribing in the US. This resulted in Surescripts becoming the defacto clearinghouse for processing virtually all prescription medications in the US.
How does Surescripts support medication reconciliation?
A: Through its Medication History function (https://surescripts.com/inform-care-decisions/medication-history) Surescript allows participating EHRs the ability to automatically pull the patient’s current medication history and, if the EHR is so equipped, reconcile any new information with the patient’s existing medication information in the EHR.
What information does Medication History retrieve?
A: The name of the drug, dosage, quantity dispensed, days supply, dispensing pharmacy, phone number of the pharmacy, prescription date, name of the prescribing physician, phone number of the prescribing physician
Do all EHRs use Surescripts?
A: No. Some EHRs do not include ePrescribing functionality or outsource the ePrescribing to a separate system which may or may not be integrated with the EHR. Unfortunately, not all EHR systems include real-time medication reconciliation.
Sevocity automatically includes this service at no extra charge.
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