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“While there are some big HMEs out there that might be able to do their own plumbing for this sort of thing, we at Brightree and I know a whole bunch of other technology vendors in the HME space and the eprescribe vendors themselves, want to support their customers and have them lean on them for the technical journey,” Knowlton explains. “So, we and others stand by, ready to talk to anybody that wants to understand how to prepare for their journey.
“Once you’ve talked to your referral sources and taken stock of your situation, talk to your technology vendors about how they can support you on your journey,” he continues.
Then the provider wants to put a strategy in place that will keep the business moving, Knowlton adds. For instance, it needs to map out how it will continue working with referral sources. Does the provider want to drive adoption of a particular eprescribe approach, or does it want to work with referrals regardless of eprescribe system and hook into what- ever platforms or approaches they might already be using?
From an organizational standpoint, the provider needs to consider how it implements eprescription with its staff during the integration. They need to determine what they can do from a personnel stand- point to be able to take advantage of these opportunities now.
“It’s getting easier and easier [to implement eprescription] every day,” Knowlton explains. “However, depending on how aggressive an HME wants to pursue driving eprescribe solutions upstream into their referral networks, there can be an investment of time from sales and marketing reps. And there can certainly be an investment of time and internal operations folks and aligning workflows with new and easier ways of doing business.”
MAINTAINING MOMENTUM
From Starck’s perspective, as both a national HME provider and the chairman of an eprescribe industry backed by multiple large providers, VGM and AAHomecare, eprescription is an industry initiative; its adoption will benefit the industry.
“I think that the number one thing everyone can do from a DME supplier community is to get involved,” he says. “The more the DME community in total rallies around eprescribe and helps move it with the referral partners, that will drive adoption. And it will drive connections and connectivity across EHRs and backend billing systems.”
Essentially, uptake increases uptake. The more providers make referral sources aware and champion eprescribe as a “priority” within the industry, the more referrals will want it, and that will help epre- scribe achieve ubiquity. The goal is to make what seems like a new innovation at this moment seem commonplace in the future.
“The more providers that get involved and actively participate and champion, the better,” Starck says. “We have a number of providers that do that today, but you think about the fact that we still have roughly 6,000 DME providers in the United States. We don’t have 6,000 people actively moving eprescribe and adopting and driving eprescribe.
“The capability is there,” he continues. “So, this is not a tech- nology issue; this is really an adoption issue. And there are multiple platforms available, and the industry and the prescribers, and the patients, really all benefit from much higher adoption of eprescribe. And the way to make it happen is for the entire industry to engage in it and really champion it.”
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