You Asked, We Shared
Questions about ePrescribe/EHR and the Pharma Marketing Opportunity – Answered
Federal funding for physician utilization requirements and emerging healthcare technology will continue to change the way pharmaceutical marketers reach physicians. The adoption of EHRs, ePrescribing and mobile provides pharma the opportunity to leverage point of care engagement via healthcare-related solutions.
Physicians Interactive, the leading provider of online and mobile clinical resources and solutions that help medical professionals provide better patient care, and Allscripts, the leader in the ePrescribing and EHR markets, hosted a webinar, entitled “Meaningful Use” – Driving Physicians to ePrescribing/EMR and the Pharma Marketing Opportunity. Questions from your peers are listed and answered below:
To view the archived video of the webinar, go here.
Q: How can pharmaceutical marketers use these new technologies (i.e. EHR and ePrescribe) in a manner that supports the interests of both physicians to receive valued, educational information that integrates into their workflow, and pharma marketers to reach physicians with their brand messaging and achieve ROI goals?
A: One way is to provide information about your brand at the point-of-prescribing that is of high clinical value to physicians and of high value to the sponsoring pharmaceutical company. Some examples may include new product announcements, formulary data, safety updates and sample/voucher/coupon availability.
Q: How will government regulations ensure that physicians will actually implement the new technology into their practices?
A: The HITECH Act, part of the ARRA of 2009, authorizes the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) to incentivize the use of the Electronic Health Records (EHR) to providers who can demonstrate “meaningful use” beginning in 2011 until 2015. Merely purchasing an EHR system and transferring information from paper into digital form does not provide clinicians the most benefit from using such technology and thus, the federal government set up standards on July 13, 2010.
In addition, the Medicare Improvements for Patients and Providers Act of 2008 (MIPPA), creates financial incentives to encourage Medicare physicians to adopt technology that will allow them to prescribe electronically. Since the beginning of 2009, physicians have been receiving a two percent increase in payments, which will phase down to 0.5 percent in 2013. However, in 2014 and afterward, physicians that have not implemented the technology will lose two percent of their payments.
Q: How does CPOE differ from ePrescribing?
A: Computerized Physician Order Entry (CPOE) allows for ordering of many different things within an acute care setting (i.e. labs, radiology, and pharmacy). ePrescribing is the ordering of a prescription only, and can be stand alone or part of an electronic heath record (EHR) system.
Q: Do you see third party managed care implementing pay for performance based on better patient outcomes? e.g. Higher healthcare provider (HCP) reimbursement if better outcomes are achieved.
A: That is the goal of healthcare – to bring better outcomes to patients. It would seem health plans will begin to understand that certain standards of care bring better outcomes to patients and develop pay-for-performance measures based on the quality of patient care.
Q: Is information gathered about all co-pay programs or are the programs only listed if sponsored?
A: The programs would only be listed if sponsored by pharma or managed care.
Q: Will pharmacies report back to HCPs on whether the script was filled or not?
A: Yes, the technology is available and in some cases this is happening today. Yet, in most cases it becomes a function of the unique interoperability between specific systems.
Q: What type of pharma-specific opportunities will arise from EHR/ePrescribe adoption?
A: Life Science companies can potentially leverage EHR data for research and marketing purposes. This technology will provide a wealth of data that can help modernize the research process, create more efficient clinical trials and improve the results of marketing efforts.
Q: Who in the government will be monitoring all these reports?
A: The Office of the National Coordinator (ONC) of Health Information Technology.
If you have further questions or for more information on emerging channel solutions, please contact Physicians Interactive at 800-794-6757 or info@physiciansinteractive.com.
