Surescripts Reports Increase in Specialty Medications Health IT Use

More prescribers and specialty pharmacists nationwide are leveraging Surescripts Specialty Medications health IT to optimize prescribing workflows.

From May 2021 to May 2022, the number of prescribers enabled for Specialty Patient Enrollment grew 24 percent.

Additionally, the number of Specialty Medications Gateway transactions was 421 percent higher in the first five months of 2022 compared to the same period in 2021.

“Eliminating the time-consuming and manual process of prescribing specialty medications and simplifying the delivery of patient information removes delays that threaten medication adherence,” Frank Harvey, CEO of Surescripts, said in a press release. “It also means healthcare professionals can spend less time on paperwork and more time focused on what matters most: patients’ health.”

Accredo specialty pharmacy recently implemented automation enhancements with Specialty Medications Gateway to obtain current information on a patient’s weight for use in weight-based dosing.

In just two months, Accredo reported that 60 percent of the time, the automated workflow delivered the patient’s most recent weight, reducing manual outreach.

Accredo also noted that 11 percent of the updated weight information was of clinical significance and presented an opportunity for pharmacists to ensure patient safety through accurate dosing.

“In caring for patients with complex diagnoses, specialty pharmacists must work with efficiency and quality,” said Katie Reeves, senior product manager at Accredo.

“Surescripts solutions accelerate the process for specialty prescribing, fulfillment, and onboarding by filling information gaps with clinical intelligence,” Reeves continued. “Speed and patient safety are enhanced because clean, critical clinical data is automatically delivered from the EHR with the prescription.”

Accredo is reviewing over 12,000 specialty prescriptions each month informed by clinical data automatically integrated from the EHR.

Specialty drugs account for the largest percentage of new medicines launched in the past five years, and retail prices for specialty drugs increased at more than three times the rate of general inflation in 2020.