Page 43 - HME Business, March/April 2022

FLIPPING THE SWITCH
In the most basic terms, HME providers can implement eprescription in essentially a day, assuming they are using the eprescription company’s web portal.
“Basically, they only need to contact the eprescribe company, whether it’s DMEScripts or any of the other eprescribe companies, and get in their network,” Starck says. “And as soon as [a provider] joins the network, it is available on the menu for the prescriber.
“There’s an onboarding process we have both for a supplier as well for a prescriber, both of which are pretty easy and can be done really in one day,” he adds.
Again, that’s for a basic implementation using the eprescription company’s web portal. If providers want a more systemic epre- scription integration where eprescrip- tions are handled through their HME soft- ware system, such as those from Brightree, Universal Software Systems, or Computers Unlimited, then there will need to be more
integration work on the back end.
“Based on the billing system the HME
provider is on, there may be some further integration needed,” Starck says. “But at a
minimum, if a prescriber and a supplier both enrolled in the same day, they could at least send them an electronic order to start. It might not be fully automated from begin- ning to end, but they could send the elec- tronic order in one day.”
GOING DEEPER
Before talking about integration with soft- ware, it’s important to understand that interoperability between healthcare systems uses a variety of technology approaches as well as standards. Making all that interop- erability happen in a seamless way is why organizations like the CommonWell Alliance and eprescription companies such as
DMEScripts, GoScrips and Parachute exist. “The physician ideally gets to do things in their native workflow or as close to their native workflow as possible, and the HME providers receive orders in their electronic systems as well,” Knowlton explains. “If interoperability is done right, HME providers and physicians don’t have to deal with any of the complexity. The vendors that they
leverage can handle it for them.”
So, for a provider that might not have a lot
of on-staff IT muscle to do their own imple- mentation but wants to integrate eprescrip- tion into their software systems, they want to consult with their software company and eprescription company.
“Once referrals experience the ease of electronic referrals and electronic orders, they start to expect it elsewhere. So we’ve seen a great increase in other home-based care settings, such as home health and hospice. ”
— Dan Starck, DMEScripts LLC
Management Solutions | Technology | Products hme-business.com | March/April 2022 | HMEBusiness 27 Untitled-16 1 3/11/22 8:22 AM