SCOTTSDALE, AZ – April 1, 2011 –The National Council for Prescription Drug Programs (NCPDP), the leading not-for-profit pharmacy standards development organization, announced today the release of a new Specialized Standard and enhancements to its SCRIPT Standard, a requirement of Meaningful Use of electronic health records (EHRs), enabling eligible providers (EPs) to transmit prescriptions electronically (ePrescribing) to pharmacies. The Specialized Standard and the SCRIPT Standard enhancement leverage NCPDP’s model-driven architecture – developed in 2010 based on a proposal initiated by the Veteran’s Health Administration – to create XML schemas to enable rapid implementation of its ANSI-approved industry standards.
Specialized standard
Developed for transmitting information electronically between prescribers, providers, payers, pharmacies and other entities, the Specialized Standard Implementation Guide addresses:
· Electronic transmission of census information about a patient between a facility and a pharmacy; and
· Medication therapy management (MTM) transactions between providers, payers, pharmacies, and other entities.
The Standard will include other transactions for electronic exchanges between these entities in the future.
SCRIPT standard
The SCRIPT Standard is in widespread use by the industry for ePrescribing. This is the first model-driven version of the SCRIPT standard that creates XML schemas. The SCRIPT Standard Implementation Guide Version 2Ø1Ø121:
· Meets requirements for Brand Medically Necessary electronic prescriptions per CMS;
· Supports one common syntax for SCRIPT transactions; and
· Moves the Census transaction to the Specialized Standard Implementation Guide to support an implementation guide for general exchanges.
The framework on which the Specialized Standard and SCRIPT Standard enhancement were developed emanated from a Veteran’s Health Administration proposal to develop model-driven XML schemas to accelerate developers’ ability to implement standards. NCPDP assigned a task group for the initiative, facilitated by NCPDP Vice President, Lynne Gilbertson. “Through this work, the foundation has been laid for the development of new functionality, as well as the movement of existing NCPDP standards into the new model framework,” explained Gilbertson. “This represents both a seamless and effective methodology for marrying the best practices of using a model environment to NCPDP’s culture and standards.”
For information on how to access the Standards or information on NCPDP member benefits, including participation in NCPDP Work Group and Task Group activities, visit http://www.ncpdp.org/member_benefits.aspx.
