The provider of a prescription drug savings card is trying something new: integrating its program into electronic health records.
Bethlehem, Pennsylvania-based health IT company Linked Healthcare Solutions, which offers the FamilyWize prescription discount card and mobile app, has launched emRxcel, a technology module that bolts onto EHR systems. emRxcel integrates FamilyWize’s prescription drug savings program with EHRs and into prescribers’ workflows.
“The neat thing about this is that it happens automatically,” said Carrie Harnish, clinical director for community benefit at Trinity Health. The Livonia, Michigan-based Catholic health system the first major test customer for emRxcel.
Trinity, which operates 93 hospitals in 22 states, has already rolled out the technology to all of its approximately 350 outpatient clinics running NextGen Healthcare EHRs. The health system will add emRxcel to locations with Cerner and athenahealth EHRs in the coming weeks, according to Harnish.
“As the prices of prescription drugs continue to go up,” Harnish said, “we are trying to help patients save money.” And they have.
In about five months since initial deployment, the EMR-embedded FamilyWize system has served 6,821 Trinity Health patients, saving them a total of $274,331, a FamilyWize spokeswoman said Monday. That is an average savings of about 43 percent over cash prices for brand-name drugs at retail pharmacies, the spokeswoman added.
“It’s really exciting that it’s a community benefit that’s happening in the background,” Harnish said.
Since 11-year-old FamilyWize is a discount program rather than an insurance plan, there is a single price list for all participants, so prescribers can pull up the out-of-pocket cost for each participating patient at the point of care. As is common across the industry, pharmacies, not prescribing physicians, would know patients’ insurance benefits for outpatient prescriptions, so the emRxcel integration does not include insurance formularies.
“It’s designed to help our uninsured patients the most,” Harnish said. It also has been used by Medicare beneficiaries who have fallen into the Part D coverage gap known as the “donut hole,” she said.
