MEANINGFUL USE CERTIFICATION (ONC/CCHIT/DRUMMOND):

WHY DO YOU NEED IT?

The only way for your customers to qualify for the Meaningful Use Incentive Program is if your application is Meaningful Use Certified through an organization such as CCHIT or Drummond.  It is also a great marketing tool for your company!

WHAT DO YOU HAVE TO RECEIVE MEANINGFUL USE CERTIFICATION?

Same criteria as listed below for Surescripts certification.

DO YOU NEED SURESCRIPTS CERTIFICATION TO RECEIVE MEANINGFUL USE CERTIFICATION?

Your company can choose to go through Meaningful Use certification before Surescripts certification and you will still achieve the Meaningful Use certification for marketing purposes.  However, you will need SureScripts Certification to “go live” with a Meaningful Use certified version.

SURESCRIPTS CERTIFICATION

WHY DO YOU NEED IT?

In order to electronically route prescriptions and search patient specific eligibility, formulary, and medication history, your application must achieve Surescripts certification.  Even when integrating with a Surescripts certified vendor such as DoseSpot, Surescripts still requires a quick certification meeting to “go live”.

WHAT DO YOU HAVE TO DO IN ORDER TO ACHIEVE SURESCRIPTS CERTIFICATION?

When using DoseSpot, your application will have to pass a quick screen demo test that includes different validation scenarios and the ability to send Surescripts messages appropriately in the backend.

WHAT’S THE MINIMUM FUNCTIONALITY THAT YOU NEED TO PASS?

If you are using DoseSpot’s e-prescribing application, the minimum functionality to pass Surescripts certification is the following:

– Method to pop the DoseSpot application in a browser from your application (using credentials & passing your patient information) and receive the DoseSpotPatientID back from DoseSpot.

– Prescribe within DoseSpot (nothing you need to do here)

– Use the DoseSpot API to check for refill requests and transmission errors in DoseSpot and provide a link within your software to DoseSpot for fulfillment.

– Appropriately validate a patient’s demographic information before sending it to DoseSpot

Electronic Prescribing for Dentistry!

The medical industry has been using electronic prescribing (“e-Prescribing”) for over a decade now. The dental industry hasn’t quite caught up.  In fact, in a recent personal survey I noticed dental practice management systems don’t provide medications in a coded format.  Meaning, the medications are free text fields and the practice hand enters the medications into the system.  This will end up limiting the user of these systems from ePrescribing, drug-to-drug alerts, drug monographs and many other features common in electronic medical record (EMR) systems.

The advantages for adopting ePrescribing are vast:

Patient Safety

The electronic prescription reduces prescriptions errors caused by illegible hand writing, drug-to-drug interactions, incorrect dosing, drug allergy reactions, duplication of drugs, etc.

Fraud and Crime

The medication history his saved electronically and can be monitored easier than paper.

Medication Adherence

Patients are more likely to fill prescriptions as they’ll be waiting at the pharmacy for pickup.  The refill process is also expedited without multiple phone calls between patient, provider, and pharmacy.

Real-time communication

Providers can write notes that follow the prescription to the pharmacist. Pharmacists can submit refill request on behalf of the patient for approval by the physician (no phone call needed).

Decision Support

Health care professionals will have critical drug alerts and patient specific information at the time of prescribing.

Government Regulations

In January 2011, the state of Minnesota released a mandate for all Prescribing Providers to electronically prescribe medications.  This mandate includes dentists.  The rule wasn’t put in place to punish dentists.  It was actually designed to bring dentist into the fold of sharing health information.

Most dental Practice Management Systems don’t have electronic prescribing capabilities.  In the next few years a number of these companies will begin adding ePrescribing capabilities.  A company called DoseSpot has developed a dental e-prescribing application accessible from the web.  The dental industry is about change the way it prescribes medications.  Stay tuned…

ePrescribe Controlled Substances in 2010?

After a long anticipated wait, the DEA is revising its regulations to provide prescribers the ability to electronically prescribe controlled substances.

On June 27, 2008, DEA published a Notice of Proposed Rulemaking (NPRM) to revise the regulation to allow creation, signature, transmission and processing of controlled substances electronically. The DEA gave consideration to over 200 comments while drafting the IFR.

The DEA’s obligation as noted in the rule, is to ensure that the regulations minimize, to the greatest extent possible, the potential for diversion of a controlled substance resulting from non-registrants gaining access to electronic prescribing applications and systems.  The concern of insufficient Security has been the main barrier to allowing the ePrescription of controlled substances.  The authentication methods used in online or desktop applications is generally username and password.  Passwords are easily guessed or broken by using various password guessing programs.

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