HIMSS19 Q&A: Surescripts CEO Tom Skelton on efforts to take on high prescription drug prices, inter…

When it comes to some of the biggest issues in healthcare from prescription drug prices to interoperability, e-prescribing company Surescripts has a big potential role to play.

And the software company has been working to grab that mantle, rapidly expanding its footprint from digitizing prescriptions to its latest effort to allow physicians to see the costs of the drugs they are prescribing in real time. So far, there are about 115,000 physicians utilizing the new solution, which has resulted in a 20% improvement in adherence among their patients, CEO Tom Skelton told me as we sat down for a conversation at the Healthcare Information and Management Sytems Society’s (HIMSS) annual conference and exhibition this week.

“We see these numbers increasing rapidly over the next two to three years. It took 10 years to get half the market to use electronic prescribing. We think in the next two to three years, we’ll exceed that as we look at real-time prescription benefits,” Skelton said.

As part of HIMSS, Skelton said the company is also working to get the word out about its other interoperability play, a record locator and exchange which can allow physicians to electronically query for a patient’s health records from any of their other providers if they are in the same system—helping patients avoid answering all those pesky questions about their health history again.