Show Notes: On today’s #vodcaast we cover E-prescribing (e-prescription), its benefits, integration with EMRs, pharmacy benefit management companies, and the challenges faced by healthcare providers. Rob Moore provides insights into the complexities of e-prescription and its impact on the healthcare industry.

“Customized solutions for healthcare providers help them avoid dependency on standard EMR vendors and reduce licensing fees and transaction costs.”

Keywords
#eprescription, #EMRintegration #pharmacy #benefitmanagement #healthcare

• E-prescription simplifies the process of sending accurate and error-free prescriptions to pharmacies electronically.
• Integration with EMRs and pharmacy benefit management companies adds value to e-prescription by providing cost information and ensuring patient affordability.
• Customized solutions for healthcare providers, including mid to larger providers, help them avoid dependency on standard EMR vendors and reduce licensing fees and transaction costs.

“E-prescription simplifies the process of sending accurate and error-free prescriptions to pharmacies electronically.”

Chapters
00:00 Introduction and Timberwolves/NBA recap
03:03 The Impact of E-Prescription in Healthcare
06:10 Integration Challenges with EMRs and Pharmacy Benefit Management
13:01 Customized Solutions for Healthcare Providers

Auto Generated Transcript

Kelly Wendlandt (00:00.27)
One and We are live with Mr. Rob Moore. Mr. Rob Moore, how are you this fine afternoon?

Rob Mohr (00:05.388)
I am doing great. Kelly, yourself?

Kelly Wendlandt (00:07.022)
You know, another day in paradise, Rob. Another day in paradise. You look like you’re ready to be done for the day.

Rob Mohr (00:09.868)
Yep. Yep.

Rob Mohr (00:15.66)
It’s been a good day, a long day. It’s all good. No, it’s not you, Kelly. It’s a good way to end the day.

Kelly Wendlandt (00:18.542)
You have a lot of long…

Yeah, I can see how that would be. Yeah. Hey, with the finals with the Timberwolves out of the finals, will you watch? Will you watch the finals between the Dallas Mavericks and the Celtics?

Rob Mohr (00:35.98)
I will not stay up late like I did with the Timberwolves games. I’m not a late person. I like to go to bed and get up in the morning. If it’s on, I’ll watch it. I’m a little down on it.

Kelly Wendlandt (00:41.166)
Timberwolves.

Kelly Wendlandt (00:49.742)
Yeah, I can see how that would be. You’re a fairly big Timberwolves. I would consider you a big Timberwolves fan.

Rob Mohr (00:55.5)
Yeah, I like home teams.

Kelly Wendlandt (00:59.086)
Well, I get it. You know, it was interesting to go to the game that I went to. The Timberwolves played so hard compared to when I watched them before and I’m not a basketball person. So this is just an untrained eye, but they played so hard compared to other years I’ve watched them and they were diving on the floor and they were, they were doing other, you know, they were equally trying equally hard in really battling as we say in the hockey biz. but,

They didn’t have Kyrie and Donna Donna sitch. What’s the? Yeah, they they those two guys just could take the game over at points.

Rob Mohr (01:32.748)
Yeah. Yeah.

Yeah, they definitely were better than us in the series.

Kelly Wendlandt (01:43.246)
Yeah, they’re better. So let me share my screen with you because I want you to see what.

What e -prescription, what they tell me about e -prescription. Can you see my screen?

Rob Mohr (02:00.876)
Not yet

Kelly Wendlandt (02:02.062)
That’s disappointing. Let’s see if I can do it here. What this? Now we can. So so when we look at a E-Prescribing because the question was asked to me, what is he E-Prescribing? And when you look at the definitions, it says he E-Prescribing enables a prescriber to electronically set an accurate, error -free, understandable prescription directly to a pharmacy from the point of care. Your doctor, I’m assuming it’s important element.

Rob Mohr (02:28.396)
Yes.

Kelly Wendlandt (02:30.926)
That just seems to me like you’re taking the doctor’s bad handwriting out of it. I’m assuming there’s more to e -prescription than that.

Rob Mohr (02:42.092)
Yeah, I mean, you’re hitting on the base level, right? The ability to send just a one well -formed script from point A to point B. Yeah, the handwriting is actually a big deal, right? Because the handwriting could, when you talk about the sig, all the directions on there that can be misinterpreted, and then the possibility for forgery, right, as well. So you take all that, you take that out of the equation. So then.

Kelly Wendlandt (03:03.726)
right. I guess I, yeah.

Rob Mohr (03:08.46)
So that’s the new RX, but e -prescribing, I think when people talk about e -prescribing, it encompasses not just the script side of it, but all the supporting transactions around it. And then, and just as important, the benefits and cost side of it. So predetermining cost, you know, making sure the patient doesn’t walk into the pharmacy the first time, realize they can’t afford the med because they weren’t informed by the physician that it was too expensive, you know, stuff like that. I think that’s, that’s where there’s a lot more value.

Well, I don’t know, the script itself is extremely valuable, but the supporting transaction adds a lot of value as well.

Kelly Wendlandt (03:40.878)
Yeah, is it integrated with your insurance company or with the government insurance that you’re using? Is that how it’s determining what you what you call formulary? The fancy word for is my prescription actually covered by me and my insurance?

Rob Mohr (03:49.324)
Yeah.

Rob Mohr (03:56.108)
Yep, yeah, the SureScripps type of integration and other places can do it as well, but it’s providing connectivity to the pharmacy benefit management company, the PBM, which handles the, it’s the payer for the pharmaceutical side. It’s direct connectivity to them. So they’re giving you, you know, tried true pricing information for a particular drug for your particular plan, where you are on your deductible, what’s out of pocket for you, all that specifics now. It’s pretty nice.

Kelly Wendlandt (04:23.822)
And who will give us some examples of who are pharmacy benefit management companies for people who don’t know?

Rob Mohr (04:29.58)
One of the big ones is, you know, prime therapeutics, express grips, CVS Health. Those are the big ones.

Kelly Wendlandt (04:36.846)
OK, and and relate. We get we get calls. Your group gets calls and we do a lot of integration related to sure scripts. How is sure scripts different than the PBMs like Express scripts?

Rob Mohr (04:50.796)
Well, Sherscripts is nothing like a, I mean, Sherscripts is a technology company. They’re not a, well, they do healthcare, but they’re a technology company. They provide connectivity. So when Sherscripts or Rxub back in the day started, there was a need for the PBMs to be able to communicate with the EMRs and the pharmacies. And they didn’t want to do one -offs. They didn’t want to do one, you know, there’s too many of them to do those.

individual connectivity. So you put SureScripts, Wasp, Rxub in the middle of that, you know, they’re the hub to reach all the spokes of all the different connectivity. And it enforced the use of standard ways to communicate with each other. So, you know, now one PBM can talk to all the EMRs instead of trying to do just talk to the big ones. So think of them in the middle.

Kelly Wendlandt (05:37.614)
And you say the EMR, these acronyms for some people, are we talking about actual software products like Epic and Cerner as an EMR? Is that what we’re talking about?

Rob Mohr (05:47.628)
Yeah, yeah, yeah, just any, any type of tool and specifically for this space, it’s the E-Prescribing tool, a clinic will use it’s whatever it’s typically within their full electronic medical record or health record. It’s usually within that system, but it doesn’t have to be it’s the part that actually writes the prescription is what we’re talking about here.

It’s typically like, it’s like you said, it’s epic. It’s, you know, that was a big one in Midwest. It’s epic, you know, so.

Kelly Wendlandt (06:10.158)
part that writes the prescription.

Kelly Wendlandt (06:15.438)
Yeah. Well, you know what? It’s more than Midwest because I was in California having a conversation on the beach and I bumped into someone from Stanford health and you know, everybody’s using Epic. So.

Rob Mohr (06:27.852)
Yep. Yep. That’s a big one. And so what where we get involved is usually with the players that are not the epics, you know, they might have a unique solution for E-Prescribing, they might have a unique type of pharmacy need, like we’re wrapping up one that’s around compound meds, which the epics of the world, and the other big EMRs don’t necessarily do a great job around compounds because they’re more complex. And there are small percentage overall prescriptions, right. So where we come involved is we

work with those niche vendors or vendors that maybe be using some other company as a pass -through to do the E-Prescribing, we do the customized interface that they can now own and not go through a transactional fee with an Epic or a Dr. First, RXNT type of solution. So I’ve done a lot of work around there. So it’s custom innovations with search scripts is kind of our strong suit.

Kelly Wendlandt (07:21.614)
That’s a common and so in the reason you mentioned the reason the reason is because we’re able to provide a custom. We build a custom application or interface or all of the above that helps the company avoid having to spend the transactional money of going through an epic or a Cerner or whatever the EMR is. Is that right?

Rob Mohr (07:39.82)
Yeah, exactly. And what also makes it valuable to that player is that it’s totally fully integrated. It’s not like a framed approach where you’re in their app and you hit a window into someone else’s app or anything. It’s totally integrated into their E-Prescribing tool and this E-Prescribing interface. And then they don’t have to work through another vendor for licensing. So yeah.

Kelly Wendlandt (08:03.63)
Yeah. Who are the kind of people that reach out to us in our Enlogisolves e -Perscription group? I know the state of Florida reached out to us, so we do state work, but who are the other kind of customers that reach out to us?

Rob Mohr (08:12.14)
Yep.

Rob Mohr (08:16.716)
Yeah, it’s well the last last couple well there’s a couple different examples the last couple that in fact I’m talking to a client potential client next week where they are they have their own EMR that they’ve been using for years and they’re integrating with another you know it’s happened to change health care that for their E-Prescribing part well

you know, things that happen with those, you’re relying on another vendor, you know, change had some issues recently, you know, and all of a sudden, if they have issues, then you have issues. So what they wanna do is they wanna remove that dependency on them and have us build the interface with ChurchCrypt so they’re not dependent on another vendor. That’s the pride most often is that they have an RxNT or a Dr. First or a DOSBOT or change as their vendor in the middle that they wanna.

It’s complex because there’s a lot of these those vendors do a good job. They do a lot of they have a lot of information, a lot of functionality. But what we can do is help them integrate it directly into their tool, not do it. The other the other big one is when people have unique solutions, like I mentioned with compound meds, they wanted us to write a full prescription rider that could do well form compounds. Because if you think about it, you know, a typical script is for one drug and most EMRs, they allow you to pick a drug and write a script for it.

This one had to be able to pick four different ingredients for that particular drug at their own quantity, strength, and units within there. And then the instructions on how to combine it to send it to the pharmacy that way. That’s two examples.

Kelly Wendlandt (09:50.958)
Yeah, and I’ve actually I’m hearing more about that kind of script related to the manjournos and some of these drugs that are helping people with diabetes or weight and they’re having to compound custom -made kind of prescriptions that go to a compound pharmacy that are then, you know, they add the ingredients and that ends up as the final drug that the person takes. So it sounds like.

You know, in my world, I’ve heard recently of people I know that have had to go that route because they couldn’t get Monjourno or some of the others that I can’t remember the names of them right now.

Rob Mohr (10:29.26)
What happens today with the current EMRs, a lot of them, is that the physician has to freehand all that information into a note of the script itself because they don’t have the ability for their system to put it into the discrete elements of the transaction. Then you lose the value of due. Something else that’s been big for us is there’s additional work and certification has to do around controlled substances.

And so some companies are coming to us to help us implement the technology to be able to do control substances because there’s additional two -factor authentication, credentialing, all that kind of stuff. And then also, as you can imagine, in a compound drug, if you’re sending four and one of them is scheduled, you want to make sure you catch that one because you cannot send it just in the notes field because it didn’t identify it as a scheduled med. So you’re breaking the law by sending a script that’s not fully vetted.

Kelly Wendlandt (11:21.71)
Yeah, interesting. And so, and I know we’re SOC 2 compliant, your group is SOC 2 compliant. Does that play into our ability to work with these Schedule 2 and more quote unquote regulated drugs that are prescribed?

Rob Mohr (11:31.5)
Yeah.

Rob Mohr (11:39.244)
Yeah, direct and indirect. So we’ve jumped on the SOC 2 bus, one, because it’s a good idea to really lock up your systems that way. But whenever we have a solution that utilizes, that we maintain and house through a cloud service, but are responsible for PHI, for protected health information, we need to be SOC 2 compliant.

We did that on our hospital side, which you’ve covered in many podcasts on that. And now that we have that, crossed that line, we found the ability to now work with some of these vendors that maybe want us to maintain their connectivity within our cloud platform. And we wouldn’t be able to do that without being SOC2.

Kelly Wendlandt (12:25.326)
Okay. You know, I want to go back because you meant we were talking about the some of the states contact us to help with their e -prescribing and integration of their healthcare different platforms. But then you mentioned another company that’s calling because they want to have their own solution to avoid working with an EMR like Epic or change healthcare, for example. What kind of company is that? Did you say that to me and I missed it?

Who is, what do they do for a actual business? The company that’s called that is wanting to control more of that process.

Rob Mohr (13:00.972)
Yeah, it’s you know, I think more often, it’s a some sort of mid to larger provider that at some point developed their own system, their own EMR. So they they had their own approach. And the only reason why they work with Dr. First or change or something like that is because that’s how they quickly got into e -prescribing without figuring all that work out. And now that it was a good idea, and it still is a good idea for some companies because it’s quicker, but.

Kelly Wendlandt (13:12.942)
Rob Mohr (13:30.668)
You give up the flexibility of making it look like what you want to look like. You give up, you start paying licensing fees and transaction costs and it gets deeper and deeper. And so it’s a company that, that type of client is typically either they have, it’s usually their own homegrown system because most of the vendors that are strictly EMR vendors, you know, they’ve already.

Kelly Wendlandt (13:54.894)
Yeah, but they’re provider, they’re hospitals, clinics, pharmacy, yeah companies, okay. Good. Well Rob Moore, thank you so much for your time. End of the day, you’re always busy and so I appreciate you taking time to talk with me. Thank you very much for that Rob and for everyone else out there, you are watching the Vodcast.

Rob Mohr (13:57.644)
Yeah. Yeah. Yeah.

Rob Mohr (14:07.884)
Not a problem, always a pleasure, Kel.