Cerner is bringing Surescripts' Real-Time Prescription Benefit tool to its Millennium EHR to provide patient-specific prescription information at the point of care, the companies announced Wednesday.
The new functionality will introduce price transparency. By leveraging information from pharmacy benefit managers, it can determine patients' out-of-pocket cost for prescriptions, and it can identify alternatives and patient specific coverage alerts, including prior authorization flags, quantity restrictions, deductibles and step therapy requirements.
Enhancing price transparency at the point of care mitigates potential "sticker shock" at the pharmacy, thereby improving medication adherence and building stronger patient-physician relationships.
"Each person needs to be at the center of their own health and care," Cerner President Zane Burke said. "With this new functionality in the EHR, not only will people have added visibility to their choices of prescriptions, but individuals can work together with their physicians to create a medication plan they can adhere to and afford."
The first health systems implementing the Surescripts tool will go live in March.
More articles on EHRs:
Black Book: Top ranked EHR vendors in 9 global regions
St. Luke's Health Care System to deploy Meditech EHR across 2 hospitals, 44 clinics
EMR alert may help physicians screen children for physical abuse, study suggests