Alexandria, VA — SureScripts, operator of the Pharmacy Health Information Exchange™, today announced that DrFirst’s award-winning Rcopia e-prescribing software has achieved GoldRx advanced product certification for 2007. The announcement gives special status to DrFirst for going beyond SureScripts’ baseline product compliance with technical standards to promote improved pharmacy-physician interconnectivity.
”We are proud to have achieved this certification for the second consecutive year,” said G. Cameron Deemer, president for DrFirst. “Consistently developing our product and operating above the industry standard has been our goal since the inception of Rcopia, when we were the first company to realize the need for connecting electronically to both SureScripts and RxHub. Our vision is to be instrumental in creating connected communities through partnerships with EMRs, health plans, health systems, physician groups, and hospitals utilizing our products and services.”
Over the past two years, SureScripts has tested and certified the applications of every major e-prescribing and electronic medical record (EMR) vendor in the U.S. More than 105 physician technology solutions are certified by SureScripts to enable their software and services to exchange prescription information with local pharmacies. However, the vast majority of physicians are still using older versions of their vendors’ software that have no bi-directional electronic pharmacy connectivity. Therefore, renewal requests are still processed by phone and fax; patients’ medication histories from community pharmacies are unavailable to physicians; and patients’ formulary and eligibility information is not as complete as it could be.
“SureScripts and many health IT experts believe that the electronic link between a physician and a pharmacist is the most critical and the most achievable first step toward broader healthcare interoperability,” said Rick Ratliff, chief operating officer for SureScripts. “For physicians making an investment in the safety of their patients, the efficiency of their practice and the quality of their own clinical decision making, GoldRx certification helps them know which software vendors are actually delivering on pharmacy interoperability and other critical levels of automation. We congratulate DrFirst on achieving GoldRx product certification for DrFirst Rcopia for 2007.”
DrFirst achieved advanced SureScripts GoldRx certification status by surpassing benchmarks for vendor performance across a number of categories:
Customer Education – vendors must raise awareness among physician customers of the opportunity to communicate new prescription and renewal information with pharmacists electronically.
Proven Pharmacy Interoperability – vendors must make pharmacy interoperability part of every new client installation.
Advanced Medication Management – vendors must enable their applications to receive medication history from community pharmacies, as well as formulary/eligibility services from the payers and PBMs certified by SureScripts.
Workflow Enhancements – vendors must meet specific service-level requirements related to the operations of the Pharmacy Health Information Exchange, and implement changes to their software based on established best practices.
Demonstrable Expertise – vendors must meet a number of benchmarks for “live” customer deployments.
DrFirst also provides leading edge secure text messaging platforms.