Humana Brings E-Prescriptions to its Home State

Louisville, Ky.-based health carrier Humana is deploying for free the e-prescription service CarePrescribe to eligibly prescription practices in Kentucky. Two thousand physicians in Florida and Texas are using the system, the company says.

CarePrescribe is manufactured by Availity, a Jacksonville, Fla.-based company Humana co-founded with Blue Cross Blue Shield Florida in 2001. It allows doctors to access a patient’s network pharmacy list and transmit prescriptions electronically to the patient’s retail or mail-order pharmacies of choice. It also offers physicians real-time access to patients’ medication history; drug and allergy interaction checks; and benefit eligibility, formulary and copayment information.

"We’re going to continue driving the adoption of e-prescribing technology because there is a tremendous opportunity to reduce medication errors, improve medication adherence, and impact overall costs,” William Fleming, VP of Humana Pharmacy Solutions, says in a statement.

For eligible Kentucky prescribers with high Humana script volume, the CarePrescribe service will include a mobile handheld device that is custom-installed and configured to work with the practice’s patient scheduling system, according to a release. The handheld devices work with a desktop platform already available to all practices in Kentucky currently using the Availity Web portal. Deployment of the handheld device to eligible physicians throughout Kentucky is in progress.

The CarePrescribe technology is powered by Prematics, a care-communication company serving the health plan industry. Prematics will provide all installation, training and ongoing support on behalf of Humana and Availity at no charge to eligible practices.

CarePrescribe can be used for both Medicare and commercial Humana members. Earlier this month, Humana announced that it would subsidize the implementation of Watertown, Mass.-based Athenahealth's AthenaClinicalsSM electronic health record service, which itself receives data from Availity. Tim O'Rourke, VP of the national network for Humana, told Insurance & Technology that the company expects to subsidize the cost for 1,000 physicians at 100 practices with "a critical mass of Humana Medicare Advantage membership."

In July, Minneapolis-based health carrier Medica made e-prescriptions available to all its members, where previously only Medicare Part D members and its Minnesota Health Care Program recipients were eligible.

Nathan Golia is senior editor of Insurance & Technology. He joined the publication in 2010 as associate editor and covers all aspects of the nexus between insurance and information technology, including mobility, distribution, core systems, customer interaction, and risk ... View Full Bio