Surescripts progress report shows nearly 11B transactions last year
ARLINGTON, Va. — Surescripts recently released its 2016 National Progress Report, highlighting the fact that its network facilitated 10.9 billion secure transactions last year, including 1.6 billion electronic prescriptions — a 12% increase over 2015. The company’s interoperable network connected 21.5% more healthcare professionals than it did in 2015 — 1.3 million — with 230 million patients.
“Surescripts is uniquely capable of delivering actionable patient intelligence that leads to better healthcare decisions, wherever they are made,” Surescripts CEO Tom Skelton said. “We started with e-prescribing, and we’ve expanded our support of prescription decisions to include patient-specific authorization, benefits and cost information. The progress we’re seeing reinforces the value we’re delivering by increasing patient safety, lowering costs, and ensuring quality care.”
Surescripts said that it extended its network in 2016 to facilitate the prescription decision-making process, help providers improve patient adherence and provide insights that support transitions of care. The company said it made more than a billion medication history transactions available to providers at the point of care and delivered 2.2 million documents summarizing a patient’s care history in 2016. It said that it continued its work to reduce the number of e-prescribing efforts to zero.
“Safety with electronic prescribing is incredibly valuable,” said Dr. James “Larry” Holly, CEO of Southeast Texas Medical Associates. “I think we're going to see over the next ten years the incidence of medication-related deaths go down dramatically—maybe even to approaching zero because of the legibility, the availability and the ease of reconciliation of those medications.”
Additionally, Surescripts said its report shows increased adoption of electronic prescribing of controlled substances, with 45.3 million scripts delivered electronically for controlled substances in 2016, marking an increase of 256 over 2015.
To view the full report, click here.