Build or Buy: How to Decide Your ePrescribing Product Strategy

May 2023

Healthcare companies will continue to digitize, and ePrescribing is essential to ensuring prescriptions are reliable, safe, and manageable. Without having to recreate the wheel, EMR, and medical software companies can add ePrescribing functionality at the click of a button and at a fraction of the cost, or they can choose to build the program on their own. When it comes to deciding whether to build or buy ePrescribing software, there are many considerations, like:

• Cost
• Complexity
• Interoperability
• Cloud or On-Premise
• Compliance
• Ease of Use

What are the Operational benefits of ePrescribing Software?

We can all agree that time is money. Practice management is always looking for workflow efficiencies and ways to innovate processes. Here are a few ways that ePrescribing can help:

• Eliminates the time, effort, and safety risks associated with reading the prescriber’s handwriting and misinterpreting the script.
• Drives down healthcare costs and improves patient satisfaction by getting medications to patients promptly, conveniently, and securely at the patient’s pharmacy of choice.
• Lowers costs associated with purchasing expensive paper prescription pads and the time and resources spent on redundant administrative tasks.
• Simplifies clinical workflows and allows prescribers to do what they do best and spend more time with their patients.

DoseSpot software integrations can get your teams prescribing in no time. Depending on the level of customization you choose, it can take as little as 30 days to get started! We even guide you through the Surescripts and EPCS certification process, so your teams don’t have to navigate it alone.

Here are some things to think about when you are deciding whether to build or buy.

Define ongoing software maintenance plans:

Determine internal and external Service Level Agreements (SLAs) – includes the level of support needed, response times, what issues will be handled internally, and when you will need additional outside resources for technical support.

Define clear roles, responsibilities, and handoffs within your teams:

• Align the knowledgeable staff and/or consultants to help you build your ePrescribing tool.
• Develop project plans, timelines, and iterative testing.
• Implement and train your staff on new systems.
• Provide ongoing documentation, support, and updates to software systems.

Research other tools you will need to keep your solution running:

• With personal information, security is critical. You will need site and performance monitoring, activity logs, and error tracking, along with 24 x 7 x 365 guaranteed uptime.
• Establish providers and processes for data backups in case of emergencies, outages, and data breaches.
• Decide if you are able to keep these measures in-house or if you will need to outsource.

Documentation and Training:

• You must have a resource to document all changes, including updates, bug fixes, and security patches. Someone will need to manage this process and supply proper documentation for each piece of functionality in your system.
• When your systems change or when new regulations are required, those changes must be communicated and all stakeholders must be properly trained. This includes users of the software and those who manage it across healthcare organizations.

Why buying ePrescribing software might be the right choice for you.

If building your own solution sounds too overwhelming, we don’t blame you. There are many reasons why companies ultimately choose to partner with a vendor for ePrescribing instead of building their own.

Cost:

With smaller development and technical teams, purchasing software that can integrate into your current practice management systems is often more efficient. Most companies provide pricing plans that require you to pay monthly instead of all at once. And as fast as technology changes, it often requires less of an investment in hardware that could be obsolete in just a few years.

Implementation Timelines:

you can often get started in weeks with software that is ready to integrate rather than waiting months to build your own.

Hassle-Free Updates:

Software providers typically offer regular software updates and maintenance, which can help ensure that your software is always up-to-date and secure.

Risk and Compliance:

Purchasing from a reputable ePrescribing software vendor takes the burden of compliance off your plate. They have the expertise and responsibility to ensure their software meets all requirements.

ePrescribing doesn’t have to be hard.

Download our full Decision Guide – Build or Buy: The ultimate checklist for implementing ePrescribing software. More than 200,000 healthcare professionals utilize DoseSpot each week to deliver care and write prescriptions for a hassle-free patient and provider experience. With access to more than 250 API calls, you have more control to tailor the system to your current workflows, limiting the disruption of changing technology and lessoning the learning curve when it is time for system training. Your providers can access our secure, intuitive, and compliant user interface to send prescriptions directly from the office or telehealth visit to the pharmacy while storing prescription data in the patient’s EMR or EHR. Watch this short video to see how it works! Give your teams the benefit of DoseSpot’s streamlined workflow, fast application response time, and customizable interface that blends seamlessly within your platform.