E-Prescribing Mandate Poses Unique Challenges for ACF and Assisted Living Providers

Members are reminded that, effective March 27, 2016, all medications must be prescribed electronically, per New York State law. LeadingAge New York has been working on this issue over the last few years, and successfully obtained a one year delay in implementation last year to enable more time to work out implementation details. We are aware that there remain concerns about implementation, and have been persistently advocating to resolve them.

There are unique challenges to implementation for adult care facility and assisted living providers, given the number of physicians and pharmacies involved. Some physicians have already moved to electronic prescribing, and members have reported that there have been some challenges as result. We have been raising these issues with the Legislature and State Agencies, and have additional meetings scheduled in the weeks ahead to try and resolve these issues. It would be helpful to hear from members the specific challenges they have faced thus far with electronic prescribing, so we can effectively convey these issues in our advocacy.

In the meantime, we urge members to communicate with their community physicians and pharmacies to ensure that they understand what documentation you need in order to assist residents with their medications. We are very concerned that lack of necessary documentation will result in a resident getting needed medication. We also want to prevent the need for excessive case management as a result of this new process; which was, in part, intended to streamline the process.

We recently reported that the NYS Department of Health Bureau of Narcotics Enforcement (BNE) has activated a system to apply for waivers. This process enables prescribers to request a waiver of the electronic prescribing requirement for one year. We have heard that BNE has already received nearly 2,000 requests. Click here for more information about the waivers, as well as information for consumers and providers about the electronic prescribing requirement.

 Contact: Diane Darbyshire, ddarbyshire@leadingageny.org, 518-867-8828