Pharmacies seek to automate physician transactions

Retail pharmacy groups band together to facilitate electronic connectivity between physicians and pharmacies.

By Tyler Chin, amednews staff. Sept. 24, 2001.

Two trade groups representing the country's approximately 55,000 retail pharmacies have established a company whose goal is to accelerate electronic connectivity between physicians and pharmacies.

The start-up, SureScript Systems Inc., will seek to partner with companies that sell physician practice management, prescribing and pharmacy software systems to develop technical standards and business rules to automate transactions that pharmacists and physicians now conduct over the telephone.

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That standardization will make it easier for information systems in doctors' offices and pharmacies to talk to each other, said SureScript Systems' founders.

The company, which will be headquartered in Northern Virginia, should be launched by the end of this year. It will be owned equally by the National Assn. of Chain Drug Stores and the National Community Pharmacists Assn.

SureScript Systems will not develop nor install new technology in physician offices, said Todd Dankmyer, NCPA's senior vice president for communications. "We view our role primarily as a facilitator."

While other parties, including technology companies, have tried to connect physicians and pharmacies in the past, they haven't gotten very far in part because doctors and pharmacists each were waiting for the other to commit first to electronic communication, said Kurt Proctor, NACDS' senior vice president of pharmacy policy and operations.

Through SureScript Systems, the two associations bring a "critical mass" of pharmacies that will encourage physicians to communicate electronically with pharmacists and technology companies to work with SureScript Systems, Proctor argues.

In attempting to link physicians and pharmacies, SureScript Systems will compete with RxHub LLC, which was founded last February by three of the country's largest pharmacy benefit managers.

Advance PCS, Irving, Texas; Express Scripts Inc., St. Louis; and Merck-Medco Managed Care LLC, Franklin Lakes, N.J.; have said they plan to invest $60 million over five years in RxHub, which expects to start operations in early 2002.

SureScript Systems will be vendor-neutral, meaning that it won't recommend that doctors or pharmacies select one technology company over another, Dankmyer said.

The company has yet to determine how it will make money. Charging monthly fees, sharing transaction fees charged by health care technology companies or charging those companies a fee to certify that their products comply with agreed-upon standards are under consideration as potential revenue sources, he said.