Formulary Hosting
Epocrates Formulary Saves Time and Sanity for Healthcare Professionals
Review of Epocrates clinical and formulary references
By Lance Norman, RPh
As a pharmacist, I use a lot of different references for medications - some easier to use than others and until recently all in a bound paper format. I heard about Epocrates Rx Pro from a colleague and decided to go to the website to download the PDA reference and 'check it out.' What a great product this is for any member of the healthcare team! I love being able to go in and have the standard dosing available for medications and their indications right at my fingertips! I also subscribed to Epocrates Rx Online, which proved to be an excellent desktop complement to the Epocrates Rx Pro mobile product.
The user interface on both programs is very intuitive and it's easy to quickly find the information that you need. I'm particularly impressed with the drug formularies that are available from a wide variety of insurance carriers. I can't count the number of times I've had to call a physician to change a prescription that was not covered under the insurance plan of the patient and had them ask, 'What is on formulary'' Unless I'd run into that drug before, I would have to refer them to the provider copy of the formulary sent to their office as a provider. This would then result in delays for filling the prescription, frustration on the part of the patient and provider, and anger aimed at the insurance company. With Epocrates, I can easily look up prescription medications and alternative medicines at once.
The Epocrates formulary tool saves time and sanity for everyone on the healthcare team. Once I have downloaded my selected list of formularies uploaded from the Epocrates website, all I have to do is choose the insurance carrier and the formulary status of each drug is displayed next to the drug name. For hospital administrators, the formulary tool has tremendous potential for use in managing drug budgets within an individual hospital formulary. A physician or other healthcare provider can know at a glance which medications are available within their particular hospital formulary. This will become even more useful as more insurance carriers and hospitals submit their formularies to the Epocrates program. It will also serve to save the insurance companies money by suggesting generic medications, rather than the latest and greatest drugs.
Another great, time saving feature in the formulary tool is the drug alternatives function. Tapping on the formulary status code to the right of each drug name brings up a pop up window with formulary code descriptions along with the option 'Tap here for Alternatives'. Tap on this message to see a list of alternative drugs in the same therapeutic class, along with their formulary status codes. You can then sort the alternative drug listing by drug or by status code. This is helpful when looking for an alternative medication if one is not covered by the patient's insurance or for viewing pre-authorizations according to the various plans. Moreover, tapping on the bolded formulary codes lets you view detailed formulary information including the criteria for receiving payer authorization for a medication or the quantity of a medication that a payer will cover. I would also like to see the phone number for the pre-Authorizations included here, but the office manager probably already has that available.
Another extremely valuable feature for me as a pharmacist and health care provider is the alternative medicines (e.g. herbal supplements) section. This is available in both Epocrates Rx Pro and Epocrates Rx Online. Most health care providers are not taught much about herbs and how they work or reported uses, yet a large section of the public uses these preparations without regard to possible drug interactions with their medications. The idea that 'If I can buy it over the counter, it can't hurt me' is finally starting to be de-bunked after sad experience. Look at how many drugs St. John's Wort interacts with. Having Epocrates is like having a quick online herbal pharmacopeia to refer to at the click of a button! It's awesome! In addition, Epocrates Rx Online gives me the ability to print entire monographs for drugs and alternative medicines to give to patients or to keep for my own reference.
The MultiCheck™ function is very useful for quickly checking drug and alternative medicine interactions. This feature enables the user to check interactions among up to 30-50 medications at one time. Unfortunately, many physicians do not currently take the time to check for interactions before writing the prescriptions, which leads to more medical prescription errors. MultiCheck allows healthcare providers to facilitate this and hopefully over time, everyone will take advantage of this function in Epocrates. I know that using it in my work, I have found it to be an invaluable tool. Using MultiCheck improves overall patient-provider relations and increases the sense of comfort for patients taking both prescription and alternative medicines.
The Tables are a great reference and provide volumes of information for the practitioner without being cluttered and difficult to access. All this results in better health care for the patient. The Tables feature is particularly useful to medical students, interns, and residents. It is also a very good refresher to the practicing professional in the trenches.
The only complaint that I have about the program is the amount of space it takes up on my Palm. As we all know, memory is becoming more of a premium on mobiles as we try to stuff more and more information and programs on them. The fact that I'm not able to load this program onto a memory card and run it from the card is a disadvantage in my opinion. Some of the competitive programs like Micromedex' will allow this and I hope Epocrates will follow suit.
I'm very impressed with the clean layout and concise manner in which information is presented in Epocrates Rx Pro and Epocrates Rx Online. I found both programs very simple to use and liked how Epocrates Rx Online imitated the format of the mobile product so that practitioners can go back and forth between products with ease. Obviously a lot of thought has gone into this product and its development. It doesn't seem cluttered with a lot of needless bells and whistles, yet is robust enough to handle most situations. Epocrates has done a great job at designing a useful tool for the healthcare professional!