Roadmap for Pharmacy HIT Integration Sets 4-Year Goals

Cincinnati—Pharmacist adoption of electronic health records (EHRs) will create the tools to further improve pharmacists’ ability to provide safe and effective medication use by patients with the main goal of facilitating access to electronic, medication-related data for all participants of the interdisciplinary healthcare team, according to a Contemporary Issues session at the AMCP meeting.

During the session titled The Roadmap for Pharmacy Health Information Technology (HIT) Integration in US Healthcare, Shelly Spiro, FASCP, RPh, executive director, Pharmacy e-HIT Collaborative, gave a presentation on the Roadmap for Pharmacy HIT. She explained that the Roadmap outlines the pharmacy sector’s HIT goals for the next 4 years, including pharmacists’ roles in care delivery, electronic prescribing (e-prescribing), medication therapy management (MTM), and immunizations.

The Roadmap was developed by the advisory work group members of the Pharmacy e-HIT Collaborative, an organization founded in 2010 by 9 professional pharmacy associations representing >250,000 members in all practice settings. Associate members of the advisory group included Surescripts, National Council for Prescription Drug Programs, RelayHealth, Mirixa, ScriptPro, IQware, and OutcomesMTM.

The Roadmap provides guidance to provider organizations, policymakers, vendors, payers, and other stakeholders striving to integrate pharmacy HIT into the national HIT infrastructure. The Roadmap is a comprehensive document encompassing pharmacists’ meaningful use of EHRs across all practice settings.

The presentation continued with Ms. Shapiro outlining the Roadmap goals (Table). She then listed immediate priorities for the Roadmap, including taking steps to ensure optimal integration of the pharmacist-provided patient care services into the nation’s HIT interoperative framework. The steps to achieve that goal include: (1) promote the Roadmap for Pharmacy HIT agenda to stakeholders, change-agents, and policymakers; (2) engage stakeholders within and outside the pharmacy sector; (3) participate in national, regional, state, local, and private HIT initiatives and agendas; and (4) educate pharmacist stakeholders to help assess and accelerate adoption of EHR by pharmacists.

After outlining the objectives and strategies for the 10 goals from 2011 to 2015, Ms. Shapiro explained that the next steps included a survey to rank and prioritize the goals. A grid of the Roadmap objectives and strategies was provided to a collaborative council, and the members ranked the top 5 out of 10 goals: (1) ensure HIT supports pharmacists in the delivery of healthcare services; (2) achieve integration of clinical data with e-prescribing; (3) ensure HIT infrastructure includes and supports MTM services; (4) achieve recognition of pharmacists as meaningful users of EHR quality measures; and (5) advocate pharmacist recognition in existing programs and policies.

Ms. Shapiro also updated attendees on the progress of the Pharmacist Services Technical Advisory Coalition’s (PSTAC) 4 work groups. Under the Pharmacy e-HIT Collaborative umbrella, the PSTAC was restructured in June 2011 to assist in meeting the Roadmap strategies related to the adoption of a pharmacist EHR and the exchange of MTM documentation.

The first work group is working on a gap analysis of all CPT^® (current procedural terminology) codes to develop guidelines on which of the codes should be used for pharmacists billing professional services. The primary goal of the second work group is to promote an understanding of the Systematized Nomenclature of Medicine-Clinical Terms codes and professional service documentation and its importance. The third work group is tasked to assist the Pharmacy e-HIT Collaborative with HIEs, direct networks, e-prescribing, clinical data exchange, and related transaction guidance. The final work group is developing implementation guides for the Health Level-7 EHR functional profile for specific pharmacy settings.

Ms. Shapiro encouraged attendees to get involved by discussing adoption of pharmacist EHR functionality with pharmacy management system vendors and taking an interprofessional team approach to EHR adoption in all practice settings.

In summary, Ms. Shapiro stated, “Pharmacists’ clinical services are a critical component of our nation’s healthcare system and can effectively contribute to the meaningful use of EHR.”