Feb 18 : CoverMyMeds and Practice Fusion Partner to Bring Electronic Prior Authorizations

CoverMyMeds, the nation’s largest prior authorization (PA) network, and Practice Fusion, the #1 cloud-based electronic health record (EHR) for doctors and patients, today announced a partnership that will bring CoverMyMeds’ integrated electronic prior authorization (ePA) functionality to Practice Fusion’s 110,000 medical professionals who manage more than 100 million patient records. The integration will enable practitioners on the Practice Fusion platform to submit ePAs for medications to health insurance plans within their existing workflow.

Click to tweet: @PracticeFusion and CoverMyMeds partner to bring Electronic Prior Authorizations for medications to over 110,000 of Practice Fusion’s users

Electronic prior authorization is the process of automating and expediting the PA process within the clinical workflow connecting prescribers, pharmacies, and health insurance companies to facilitate the determination of medication benefits and ensure patients receive their prescribed medications. The adoption of ePA is particularly important due to the administrative strains that paper-based PA processes have on prescribers and payers. According to multiple studies, more than half of prescribers indicate they, in conjunction with their staff, spend an average of 20 hours per week on prior authorizations. This is the result of the multiple phone calls and faxes between the prescriber, plan, and pharmacy that typically accompany the completion of a PA. This translates to more than 1,000 hours per year.

“As the leading cloud-based EHR on the market, Practice Fusion’s integration with CoverMyMeds is an important step in fueling ePA adoption and making electronic prior authorization more accessible to prescribers,” said Matt Scantland, Co-Founder of CoverMyMeds. “We’re thrilled that we can make prior authorizations more efficient for Practice Fusion’s prescribers, while helping patients receive prescribed medications faster.”

“Prior authorizations are considered the single most tedious process in a doctor’s workflow,” said Ryan Howard, founder and CEO of Practice Fusion. “Working with CoverMyMeds ensures that our community of health care professionals no longer have the pain of this traditionally tedious workflow, and allows them to focus on what they trained to do, which is spending more time serving their patients.”

Practice Fusion is the latest EHR system to partner with CoverMyMeds for electronic prior authorizations, a process that involves integrating CoverMyMeds’ NCPDP SCRIPT Standards-based API into the existing prescriber workflow within EHR systems. CoverMyMeds currently works with more than 360 EHR systems, 45,000 pharmacy locations and healthcare payers that represent 72% of U.S. prescription volume. CoverMyMeds is free for prescribers and pharmacists and used by more than 260,000 providers nationwide.

Electronic prior authorization functionality through CoverMyMeds will be offered at no cost to Practice Fusion prescribers.

About CoverMyMeds
CoverMyMeds is the leader in Prior Authorization management and one of the fastest growing healthcare technology companies in the US. We help physicians, pharmacists, and their staff complete PA requests for any drug and all health insurance plans. Our technology integrates with pharmacy systems, EHRs, and PBMs to create the most efficient electronic prior authorization (ePA) strategy for all participants. With a million PAs submitted each month, CoverMyMeds is the only vendor using the NCPDP ePA standard at scale. For more information, visit www.covermymeds.com.

About Practice Fusion
Practice Fusion is the #1 cloud-based electronic health record (EHR) platform for doctors and patients, with a mission of connecting doctors, patients and data to drive better health and save lives. A driving force in modernizing American health care, Practice Fusion is used by a community of more than 110,000 monthly active medical professionals with over 100 million patient records. In 2014, Practice Fusion’s EHR facilitated over 56 million patient visits (approximately 6% of all ambulatory visits in the US) and is the largest and fastest growing EHR in the US.