Point-of-Care Partners has launched the ePrescribing State Law On-Demand – a new solution designed to enable EHR and ePrescribing vendors to quickly assess the evolving regulatory environment for electronic prescribing.

This has been an explosive year for new legislative mandates, many of which directly impact how medications are prescribed through electronic health records (EHRs). The trend is accelerating, particularly as states attempt to reign in the opioid epidemic. From April to June 2017, 62 new ePrescribing regulations were issued across 26 states. Examples include mandated electronic prescribing, controlled substance prescribing limits, requirements for prescribers to check the state Prescription Drug Monitoring Program (PDMP) database, and biosimilar substitution rules.

“Opioid prescribing limits are being enacted to guide prescribers to be more intentional about prescribing the minimum amount needed to address patient pain. There is little consistency in how the states are addressing these problems. Prescribers may need new forms of decision support through their EHR to guide them,” said Connie Sinclair, R.Ph., Director of Point-of-Care Partners’ (POCP) Regulatory Resource Center.

State PDMPs continue to tighten up prescriber access mandates and requirements are becoming more complex. As Point-of-Care Partners has projected, states are very interested in PDMP integration and interoperability with EHRs. A few still prohibit data sharing, but more are legislating to facilitate data access via the EHRs.

The new State Law On-Demand includes summarized ePrescribing regulations for all 50 states and Washington, DC. Updated within the most recent 3 months, this data snapshot provides easy-to-reference information that simplifies regulatory compliance monitoring.