New e-CMN vendor launches with a prescriptive twist

LEWIS CENTER, Ohio - A new e-CMN vendor is hoping a soup-to-nuts approach from referral to e-CMN will win a share of the now active market for HME supplier business. In Ohio recently, the state's Board of Pharmacy sanctioned Medry Software's R-Referral software package as an official processor of electronically signed prescriptions. This means that Ohio doctors, using R-Referral, can electronically sign prescriptions for durable medical equipment and route the prescription to the HME supplier over a secure Internet connection. The same software lets physicians automatically route referrals to suppliers and lets suppliers exchange e-CMNs with physicians. About two-third of all states permit electronic processing and most others are making progress toward e-prescribing. Medry's director of marketing, Jim Schwamburger, believes that e-prescriptions will be commonplace in five years. We're trying to tackle the issue everyone else is: How do you get the doctor to turn it on,” said Schwamburger. “With R-Referral, I can walk in with five different providers and provide a network for home health, infusion and DME.” The sell, he said, is not to the doctor but the office manager who would load the software into their computer system. To process referrals or e-CMNs, the doctor's office would fill in the electronic forms themselves. Although data entry is a loathesome hurdle, especially when software systems lack import-export functionality, Schwamburger said most doctors are not so electronically savvy that they demand software interaction. “This is not for the physician who has already spent $5000 on a chartless system,” he said. “It's for the docs in between who are using a scheduler and have a billing department but aren't doing anything electronically with charting.” For DME suppliers, Medry charges a one-time set-up fee of $500. Transactions then costs $3 each. An e-CMN exchange would involve two transactions.