Surescripts releases report on clinician perspectives, prescribing patterns

Surescripts, the nation’s leading health information network, has released a new data report, dubbed "Clinician Perspectives & Prescribing Patterns Reveal Opportunities for Care Team Evolution," highlights the biggest issues facing care providers, pharmacist prescribing trends and opportunities for patient care teams to continue evolving to meet the needs of patients. 

“Barriers that limit health intelligence sharing between clinicians prevent the benefits of an evolving care team, like greater efficiency and more accessible care for patients, from being fully realized,” said Frank Harvey, CEO of Surescripts. “Policies are evolving at the state level to allow pharmacists to provide care at the top of their education and training. While this is a step in the right direction, a truly comprehensive policy shift is still needed to bring reimbursement and access to patient intelligence sharing in line with how care is being delivered today so that we can continue helping health care heal itself.” 

[Read more: Surescripts reports that healthcare interoperability reached record levels in 2023]

Key highlights:

• 85% of pharmacists and 76% of other clinicians (including physicians, physician assistants and nurse practitioners) ranked prescription medication costs as the top issue and 85% of pharmacists and 72% of other clinicians ranked burnout as the second biggest issue.
• Since 2023, a growing number of pharmacists (75%, up from 65% in 2023) and other clinicians (29%, up from 26% in 2023) agree with the statement: "we should allow pharmacists to take on more primary care duties like performing point-of-care testing and diagnostics, managing medications used to treat chronic conditions, and prescribing medications for certain conditions." 
• About one-third of pharmacists feel their current position allows them to offer patients all the care they need (36%).
• Unlike other clinicians, more than 8 in 10 pharmacists regard connecting pharmacists and other clinicians with centralized clinical information about their patients as a high priority. (85% of pharmacists and 57% of other clinicians).
• Pharmacists and other clinicians agree that it is somewhat or very difficult to share patient information securely and confidently with other care providers (46% of pharmacists and 31% of other clinicians).
• The top 100 most active pharmacist e-prescribers were responsible for 561,054 new prescriptions nationwide in 2023. Pharmacists in California, New Mexico, and New York accounted for 52.9% of the total nationwide pharmacist-issued e-prescriptions. 

Between 2022 and 2023, Surescripts’ analysis shows that e-prescriptions issued by a pharmacist have increased 13% and the number of pharmacists e-prescribing also increased 28.8% in the same timeframe. 

The top 100 pharmacists e-prescribing on the Surescripts network prescribed a variety of medications to treat chronic and acute conditions, most commonly diabetic therapies as well as psychoanaleptics and psycholeptics (two classes of medications prescribed for psychiatric conditions like depression, attention-deficit/hyperactivity disorder, anxiety and bipolar disorder). 

[Read more: Surescripts reports healthcare interoperability reached record levels amid pandemic]

“This new data shows that patients are driving demand for pharmacists to provide a broader range of clinical care services closer to home, but they need to be reimbursed for these services and gain access to key patient insights to ensure they can provide better quality, safe and less costly care,” said Shannon Reidt, director medication research and analytics for Surescripts. “Given the primary care provider shortages we are seeing, it’s becoming more critical to advance policies that allow pharmacists to care for patients at the full scope of their education and training—which includes medication management for patients with chronic conditions and provide test-to-treat services for patients for routine illnesses.”

Surescripts partnered with APCO Insight to conduct a survey between April 24 and May 2, to understand the opinions and attitudes of pharmacists and prescribers (including physicians, physician’s assistants and nurse practitioners) on a variety of topics around the healthcare industry including job priorities and challenges, impressions of the wider industry and views toward expanding pharmacists’ role in patient care. A total of 506 individuals completed the online survey.

Surescripts also interviewed leaders from national and regional payer organizations and analyzed E-Prescribing trends between 2019 and 2023.