Specialty Medication Enrollment
2.0.0-ballot - STU 2 Ballot US

This page is part of the Specialty Medication Enrollment (v2.0.0-ballot: STU2 Ballot 1) based on FHIR R4. . For a full list of available versions, see the Directory of published versions

IG Home Page

This version of the IG includes new content to support requesting and sharing consents that are frequently needed when fulfilling specialty product prescriptions.

Additions in version 2.0.0 (STU2 ballot)

Overview

This FHIR implementation Guide describes the exchange of patient demographic, clinical and coverage data to support fulfillment of specialty medication prescriptions by pharmacies, and enrollment of patients into related support programs offered by parties such as Hub vendors and pharmaceutical manufacturers.

This guide is the result of collaboration between HL7 and the National Council for Prescription Drug Programs (NCPDP).

Background

The current process for exchanging information to support specialty medication fulfillment is complex and manual, often resulting in delays of days to weeks before patients can begin their therapy. This is caused largely by the absence of an industry standard for exchanging clinical data needed to dispense specialty medications and enroll the patient into associated support and savings programs.

NCPDP created a task group to focus on the exchange of this data, with the goal of reducing the time to therapy for a patient who has been prescribed a specialty medication. The group identified demographic, clinical and coverage information needed to support the process, and defined data exchange workflows between the clinic, pharmacy and other fulfilling parties to efficiently deliver the data to the parties that need it.

This information is outside of the scope of the NCPDP e-prescription standard that conveys specialty orders to pharmacies in the US today. After an extensive analysis of the types of information required beyond what is carried in the prescription, the task group determined that developing an implementation guide using HL7 FHIR would be the best approach for meeting this need. Exchange of that information is the focus of this guide.

Scope of This Guide

This guide addresses the exchange of information to support specialty medication fulfillment functions, including:

  • medication dispensing and billing
  • specialty enrollment for programs or services
  • facilitation of clinical care management, education, and training.

The guide does not address transmission of the original prescription from the prescriber to dispensing pharmacy, which is typically accomplished in the US using the NewRx message defined in the NCPDP SCRIPT standard.

Further, the exchanges described in the guide are not intended to be used to request a change to a received prescription or to propose a particular clarification; these functions are supported by the NCPDP SCRIPT RxChangeRequest and RxChangeResponse messages.

This implementation guide is intended be used in the United States. It reflects US pharmacy processes and conventions.

Content and Organization

The guide is organized into the following sections:

FHIR Basics

For those new to FHIR, the material below describes basic FHIR principles and gives guidance for reading FHIR specifications.

Authors

HL7 Pharmacy Workgroup
NCPDP Workgroup 18 - Specialty Requirements for ePrescribing Taskgroup
Frank McKinney frank.mckinney@pocp.com