Home Forums Starting ERx in AC

Just purchased AC for our practice last week. Have not added any real patients yet. Would like to know what happens when ERx is activated and you start getting refills requests if you have not entered any patients in AC. Can you then simply go ahead and enter basic info. like name, birthdate and then go ahead and do your refills requests? Or do you have to have entered patients in prior to signing up for ERx? We were told to either enter the patients in manually before signing up for ERx or have the data file from our billing software uploaded to AC. We want to avoid uploading our medisoft data because we have thousands of former patients who do not need to be in the new EHR. Also, we will continue to use Medisoft for billling so don't really need all of the insurance info. in AC at least initially. Would love to hear anyone's experience starting the ERx process for the first time with AC. Also, we are going from paper charts to AC and use Allscripts free rx. currently. We just don't want to be surpised a deluge of refills requests that cannot be refilled when we first are approved to start. Thanks, Frank.

Frank,

When you get a refill request, you are asked to match the patient and the medication. If no patient is in the system to match, then you can enter their information (name, DOB, address etc). You have to have Amazing Charts activate your software so you can get electronic renewal requests. Not all pharmacies send their refill requests electronically. We still get fax refill requests.

That seems fairly easy. So it sounds as there is no particular reason to spend hours and hours entering in all the patient ahead of time before activating the Erx. Thanks Marty.

Frank,

We enter patients into AC as they come in to be seen. We then scan their paper chart and save that file as a PDF on a portable hard drive. The paper chart is then shredded. If any information is needed from the old chart, we access the portable drive and import it into AC. This has worked fairly well for us.

It was an adjustment going from paper to EHR. My favorite part is not having to look for the paper chart. The E-prescribing has been very helpful in that we hardly get any calls from the pharmacy anymore for clarifications.

You'll find this user board to be very helpful in that others have gone through what you are going through now. I usually turn to the user board first for any questions I have.

Best of luck!

Frank,
Welcome to AC and the user board. A couple of points:
1. Activating eRx is not the same as authorizing electronic refill requests. You can start e-prescribing now, and wait until later to allow electronic refill requests.

2. While you only need name, birthdate, and gender to create a new patient in AC, you need full address information to send a prescription electronically. It will be a bit of hassle initially to send those prescriptions, especially if the patient is not in the office (or at least, on the phone) at the time. There are several ways to handle your situation. We elected to import our complete (pre-EMR) patient list. We included only the names and addresses; no insurance information. This should be easily done with a file exported from Medisoft and into AC; the Guardian Angels will help you with that. Yes, you include many patients that you may not see again, but this does not create much of an issue (actually, none, except for seeing those patients in your patient list). On the other hand it makes it easier to get started with the patients that you will be seeing?and easier to e-prescribe for them.

Thanks, Jon.
I didn't realize I could immediately start e-prescribing. I may try my first new EHR patient tomorrow. Getting excited!

Frank
Psychiatry

I hope I didn't mislead you....you DO need to sign up with e-prescribing, but this is separate from getting electronic refills. Have you already activated e-prescribing?

I guess I am a bit confused. We already e-prescribe with allscripts. We have not activated e-prescribing through AC. I think will we do what you suggested and import our Medisoft patient demographics then sign up through AC.

Frank,

I believe there are several users of AC that continue to use allscripts to e-prescribe because it has some features that are superior to the e-prescribing function of New Crop that AC uses--so you might want to do a search to look into this possibility as well.

Thanks, jimmie.

Frank,
I think what you are suggesting is the best approach. I hope I didn't confuse things. You first start with AC without e-prescribing. This may be as a free trial or after you formally sign up and pay. Once you have paid for the program, you can contact AC and get erx activated at any time (though sometimes there has been a bit of a delay getting that done; don't be shy about re-contacting them if the process is taking too long). Once the e-rx is active, you can choose to have them immediately send you electronic notice of refills. Alternatively you can wait, and do that later.
As Jimmie says, some people prefer the functionality of Allscripts erx. It does have some advantages, though the downside is the need for double entry of patient demos.

Is anybody having problems eprescribing CVS Caremark and Walgreens Mail Service? It seems that somebody is asleep at the wheel at these sites.