What You Should Know:
– In the face of the COVID-19 pandemic, the digital transformation of healthcare accelerated in 2020 with increased adoption of interoperable tools to support innovations in care management, price transparency and specialty medications, according to the Surescripts 2020 National Progress Report.
– The data, which represents 98% of the U.S. population, reveals how the digital transformation of healthcare was expedited over the past year by COVID-19. This transformation resulted in a swift shift in how patients received care, helping to drive an increased need for seamless exchange of patient information and e-prescribing.
Key Highlights from the Surescripts 2020 National Progress Report:
– E-Prescribing adoption exceeded one million prescribers for the first time, adding 63,000 prescribers in 2020 and a total of 1.91 billion electronic prescriptions. Many prescribers provided care virtually, with the number of electronic prescriptions written using telehealth increasing 72.5% during the first month of the pandemic.
– Adoption of Electronic Prescribing for Controlled Substances (EPCS) made significant progress, as prescriber enablement increased 30% and more than half (58%) of controlled substance prescriptions were electronic.
– Providers also ramped up their adoption and utilization of innovative tools for price transparency. More than 413,000 prescribers used Real-Time Prescription Benefit to perform nearly 240 million benefit checks at the point of prescribing, an increase of more than 75% over 2019.
– Specialty medications require a unique and time-consuming process that can delay time to therapy by up to two weeks according to nearly 40% of providers. In 2020, the Surescripts Network Alliance drove a 214% increase in the number of prescribers enabled for Specialty Patient Enrollment.
– In an effort to avoid the administrative burden and related delays of paper-based public health reporting, 35 healthcare organizations nationwide used Clinical Direct Messaging to send nearly six million electronic case reports for COVID-19 to 61 jurisdictions nationwide.
– Care management expanded with a 159% increase in the number of medication histories delivered to health systems, hospitals and accountable care organizations as part of their population health initiatives.
– More than 137,000 clinicians used Record Locator & Exchange to access and share patient records, including 426 million links to clinical document sources, across all 50 states and Washington, D.C.
