athenahealth Expands Health IT Partnership, Prescription Drug Price Transparency

epocrates, an athenahealth company, has expanded its partnership with health IT vendor ConnectiveRx in efforts to boost clinical decision support through prescription drug price transparency.

The expanded health IT partnership is expected to provide patients on athenahealth’s nationwide, cloud-based network with reduced out-of-pocket costs for medications.

According to a Annals of Internal Medicine study, between 20 to 30 percent of medication prescriptions are never filled and 50 percent of chronic disease medications are not taken as prescribed.

Lack of drug affordability and awareness of cost-saving options are two major barriers that contribute to low medication adherence.

With the ConnectiveRx ScriptGuide program, providers will receive patient savings offers within the athenahealth EHR after they write the prescription.

“At athenahealth, we constantly evolve our offerings to better support and engage healthcare professionals, aiming to deliver the personalized information they need to optimize patient care and outcomes,” Paul Brient, chief product officer at athenahealth, said in a public statement.

“Through this partnership with ConnectiveRx, we look forward to providing additional value to our customers’ patients by addressing two of their biggest barriers: medication cost and non-adherence,” Brient continued.

epocrates and the health IT vendor first unveiled their partnership earlier this year when epocrates became the exclusive reseller of ConnectiveRx’s ScriptGuide patient savings messages.

The clinical decision support solution comes alongside other health IT innovations that aim to boost medication adherence.

Last month, GoodRx announced a partnership with Surescripts to create a clinical decision support EHR integration that enhances prescription drug price transparency.

The Surescripts Real-Time Prescription Benefit EHR integration will allow prescribers to provide uninsured patients with drug discount pricing from GoodRx.

Patients for whom price information isn’t already available from their pharmacy benefit manager (PBM) or health plan will also be eligible for GoodRx’s discounted prescription drug pricing of up to 80 percent off of pharmacy retail prices.

The health IT tool aims to foster patient-provider conversations regarding prescription drug affordability to increase medication adherence.

According to an internal GoodRx survey, approximately one in three Americans have skipped filling a prescription for a chronic condition due to cost one or more times.

“Providing prescription price transparency at the point of care is critical to improving medication adherence and ensuring patients can receive the treatment they need,” Mike Pritts, chief product officer at Surescripts, said in a public statement.

“With the addition of our drug discount pricing feature for uninsured patients as well as patients whose price information isn’t already available from their PBM or health plan, Real-Time Prescription Benefit arms prescribers with more of the information they need, so they can have meaningful cost conversations and get patients started on medication they can access and afford,” he continued.