Issue link: https://viewer.e-digitaledition.com/i/66918
Catch Up, Doc! pharmacies that process and dispense their orders. U.S. office-based physicians use e-prescribing, leaving them far behind the by KEVIN FEATHERLY standards, the pharmacy industry might be justified for the frustra- tion its practitioners feel about the slowness of IT adoption by cli- nicians who write prescriptions. "Pharmacies were the early G iven its pioneering role in developing healthcare information technology adopters of any kind of elec- tronic standards," says Holly Whitcomb Henry, chair of the Pharmacy Services Technical Advisory Coalition and past presi- dent of the National Community Pharmacists Association. "As far back as 20 years ago, almost all of our dispensing transactions that were paid for by third parties were all adjudicated in an online real-time atmosphere. Even as far as billing for services, we were way ahead of the curve." Clinicians, however, have not moved as swiftly in adopting HIT. For Henry, who owns three pharmacies in the Seattle area, that is a problem. hospital, they are going out to be taken care of by their community pharmacies," she says. "We need to have good HIT solutions to make sure we can continue to do our jobs and take care of these people in their communities." The data standards needed "When the patients leave your to make that possible have been in place for years, but pharma- cies' ability to electronically communicate with physicians and hospitals has long been restricted by the slow uptick of electronic health record adop- tion by clinicians. Even for those systems that are in use, the lack of interoperability between phar- macy and clinical systems cre- ates another obstacle. Gradual Adoption Some 15 years ago, the National Council for Prescription Drug Programs spearheaded the SCRIPT standard, now man- datory for Medicare Part D 66 e-prescription transactions. The NCPDP also led development of the D.0 telecommunications stan- dard that the Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) requires for pharmacy claims transactions. In 2009, the council formed the Standards Charter Organization, a collabo- ration of healthcare stakeholders that includes Health Level 7, the American National Standards Institute's ASC X12 commit- tee, the Healthcare Information Technology Standards Panel and other healthcare technology groups. John Klimek, senior vice president of industry IT for the NCPDP, says physicians are creeping into the electronic health record realm—a fact he attributes largely to the federal government's meaningful use mandate. However, Klimek says, "It's not as fast as what every- body would hope." He calls it the penguin problem: "Everyone is A study shows only half of