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February 25, 2015
Military Pharmacies Now Enabled to Accept Outside E-Prescriptions
Falls Church, VA—While healthcare in the U.S. armed services often is cutting edge, in at least one area, the military is just catching up to civilian counterparts. A recent expansion of e-prescribing brought pharmacists at military treatment facilities (MTF) in line with their civilian counterparts by allowing them to accept electronic prescriptions from providers off base. As of February 7, physicians had electronically submitted more than 140,000 prescriptions to MTF pharmacies, nearly twice the number filled as of mid-January. Gibbs expects the week over week numbers to grow substantially as military pharmacies communicate the new option to community providers. For most civilian providers, federal incentives and electronic health record systems have made e-prescribing a part of the normal workflow. As of April last year, 96% of community pharmacies in the U.S. were enabled to accept e-prescriptions, and about 70% of physicians had the technology to transmit them, according to government statistics. Because of that experience, the change for the military was fairly straightforward. Providers now just scroll through the list of pharmacies in their e-prescribing database or network and select recently added military pharmacies. According to the Defense Health Agency website, the electronic prescribing initiative “…brings the Military Health System into alignment with the e-Prescribing Meaningful Use Requirements and also addresses the growing number of civilian providers who utilize electronic prescribing as their only means of generating a prescription.” The off-base option was first piloted in March 2014 at Naval Hospital Bremerton in Bremerton, Washington. Following extensive testing, the roll out began in September and ended this month with 161 pharmacies participating in the U.S., including Guam and Puerto Rico. In the military, e-prescriptions cannot be used for all drugs, however. Prescriptions for controlled substances such as narcotics and stimulants still must be faxed or hand written and delivered personally to the pharmacies. The Drug Enforcement Administration has permitted e-prescriptions for Schedule 1 through 5 drugs since 2010, but the system requirements are substantially more involved than for other medications. In the Release Notes documentation provided to pharmacies, the Defense Health Administration (DHA) noted, “The CHCS does not meet the Drug Enforcement Agency (DEA) regulation for the e-prescribing of controlled substances.”
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