Emerging and encouraging trends in e-prescribing adoption among providers and pharmacies

The objective of this study is to describe the growth in provider (physician, nurse practitioner, and physician assistant) adoption of e-prescribing and the growth in pharmacies actively accepting e-prescriptions using nationally representative data from December 2008 to December 2012. Additionally, this study explored e-prescribing adoption variation by urban and rural counties.

Descriptive analysis of nationally representative, transactional e-prescribing data.

Data for this analysis were from Surescripts. Surescripts is a leading e-prescription network utilized by a majority of all chain, franchise, or independently owned pharmacies in the United States routing prescriptions for more than 240 million patients through their network.

The total number of prescribers, including physicians, nurse practitioners, and physician assistants e-prescribing via an electronic health record (EHR) on the Surescripts network has increased from 7% to 54%. Additionally, the number of pharmacies actively accepting e-prescriptions is 94%. These increases in pharmacies actively accepting e-prescriptions and the provider's eprescribing mirror the increase in the volume of e-prescriptions sent on the Surescripts network.

This analysis shows that the vast majority of pharmacies in the United States are able to accept e-prescriptions and over half of providers are e-prescribing via an EHR.