Other healthcare industries have made incredible efficiency gains thanks to eprescription. Now this game-changing technology is making strides in postacute care, and that includes HME. How do providers leverage its benefits?

Say hello to eprescription, the electronic healthcare handshake that is rapidly gaining momentum in HME. For years, HME has sat on the sidelines of healthcare’s adoption of eprescription, but several factors are changing that.

So, what is eprescription? It’s simple: rather than a referral source sending a faxed prescription to an HME provider, the referring physician or other healthcare professional can send the prescription electronically. Eprescription acts as the secure, HIPAA-compliant mechanism for sending prescription and patient data from the referral source to the HME provider. This leaves nothing up to interpretation; the prescription is accurate, error-free, and includes all the necessary information for a clean claim.

While eprescription has been a regular component of healthcare IT systems for years, its adoption in the home medical equipment industry has taken some time, but recently that development has gained traction. HME software companies such as Brightree LLC (Brightree.com) have been working to drive eprescription for the industry, and eprescribe companies such as Parachute Health (parachutehealth.com) and GoScripts (goscripts.com) have been offering eprescription solutions specifically for HME providers and their referrals.

The biggest recent development in eprescription for HME happened last September when a collection of HME industry leaders formed DMEScripts LLC, an eprescription company for HME that was driven by providers and industry groups. The alliance of investors forming DMEScripts includes the American Association for Homecare, VGM & Associates, AdaptHealth LLC, Apria Healthcare Group LLC, Lincare Inc. and Rotech Healthcare Inc.

Suffice it to say, eprescribe for HME is starting to make big strides. That’s due to several factors.

“We’re starting to see a lot of the solutions out in the space come of age, and we’re seeing a greater uptake amongst referral sources and HMEs alike for moving forward with technology-based solutions to enable eprescribe,” says Nick Knowlton, vice president of business development for Brightree.

Knowlton has been heavily involved in health data system interoperability and eprescription for HME. In fact, Knowlton chairs the CommonWell Health Alliance board of directors and has been involved in the Alliance since it was founded roughly nine years ago. CommonWell is a group of various healthcare technology stakeholders that aim to create links between disparate healthcare data systems to securely connect patient records and data services across those systems.

Also, the Covid-19 public health emergency helped accelerate the adoption eprescribe for HME.

“I’d say since we formed, we’re seeing an uptick, and I think the rest of the eprescribe platforms are as well,” says Dan Starck, CEO of Apria and chair of DMEScripts’ board of directors.

Starck adds that the number of platforms out there and the expanding range of claims they support is also helping drive adoption. This helps providers continue to specialize.

“Not only DME but also medical supplies, and diabetes supplies,” he says. “As those product lines continue to be built out and are facilitated through the eprescribe platforms, the more advantageous it becomes or easier to send the referrals to multiple providers or suppliers.”

Another factor that is helping to drive the uptake of eprescription for home medical equipment is the fact that referral partners are seeing eprescription spread across postacute care in general, Knowlton says. That creates an expectation on the part of referring physicians.

“Once referrals experience the ease of electronic referrals and electronic orders, they start to expect it elsewhere,” he explains. “So we’ve seen a great increase in other home-based care settings, such as home health and hospice.

“And we are seeing very large upticks now appearing in the HME and equipment space,” he adds. “I think the progression that we’ve seen in the past year has been tremendous in terms of the number of physicians enrolled in various networks. Be they ordering from a standalone platform, such as Parachute, GoScripts, or DMEScripts, or leveraging specialty platforms or direct from EHR integrations.

Eprescription offers a lot to providers. For starters, it’s a massive efficiency gain in the way that providers work with referral and their patients.

“There’s a huge opportunity that still exists out there around adoption and the ability for the industry to move off of the old fax paperbased system and adopt it at a much higher level and a faster rate,” Starck says.

“Ultimately, it’s a shorter time allotment for somebody sending a referral,” he continues. “And it’s a shorter timeframe for the supplier to process and qualify a patient. Both of those things mean the patient gets their equipment faster, and there’s less rework. So, all those things align and begin, I think, to build that business case.”

And that efficiency helps considerably in terms of providing care. Increased care and service make a big difference in an increasingly outcomes-oriented reimbursement environment.

“When we talk about eprescribe, we’re talking about getting any type of order or documentation over from the referral sources that is going to help the HME take care of a patient or obtain reimbursement,” Knowlton explains. “And in our industry, a lot of times taking care of the patient and being able to obtain reimbursement go hand in hand.”

This article originally appeared in the Mar/Apr 2022 issue of HME Business.

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