Cerner and CoverMyMeds are announcing this morning an agreement to integrate CoverMyMeds’ ePA within Cerner’s Millennium EHR. The advanced functionality will provide more than 350,000 e-prescribing end-users the ability to accelerate the prescription review process by removing manual processes and helping to reduce transaction costs. CoverMyMeds will provide Cerner physicians the capability to process requests electronically in seconds and receive notification of a patient’s authorization status within minutes.
What is ePA?
ePA is the process of automating and expediting prior authorization (PA), which is used to determine patient benefit coverage for prescribed medications. The traditional PA process is paper-based and reliant on faxes and phone calls to connect health care professionals.
Integration Benefits
- Initiate a PA at the time of prescribing or complete a pharmacy-initiated PA
- Skip paper forms and faxes by submitting PA requests electronically
- Complete PA requets for any medication and all health plans
- Receive faster determinations from health plans that work with CoverMyMeds for ePA – often within moments!
“Integrating CoverMyMeds within Cerner’s EHR provides physicians access to a modern and efficient authorization process with fewer phone calls between doctors and pharmacies. We believe increasing interoperability among pharmacies, prescribers and facility systems will help improve the delivery of health care,” said Kashif Rathore, senior director of interoperability, Cerner.
According to a 2012 study by the Center for Health Transformation, PA and other medication formulary requirements are significant contributors to the cost of provider interaction with health plans, which exceeds $100 billion annually. The study also showed beyond the health care costs, PA requests can delay patient treatment and result in prescription abandonment.
CoverMyMeds’ integrated ePA capability will be available to Cerner clients in 2016. More integration details can be found at https://cerner.covermymeds.com.
