Boost dermatology Rx rate with EHR strategy

As prescribers spend increasingly more time immersed in digitized workflows, competition for their attention grows fierce. More than 90% of healthcare providers use an Electronic Health Record (EHR) platform, and HCPs — including dermatologists — spend more than half of their clinical time engaging with software. EMA from Modernizing Medicine Inc. is a dermatology-specific EHR and is the most widely used EHR by dermatologists. EMA records details about patients’ health and also tracks prescribing behavior, using that data to offer treatment suggestions as part of its AI capability.

Against this backdrop, building a pharma brand’s visibility requires field representatives to use sophisticated approaches and tools. Sales conversations must bridge the gap between relationship and technology to add value to prescribers’ already overloaded workflow.

Here are a few tips for optimizing the time you spend talking with dermatologists, assisting them with workflow tasks within EMA that will not only empower HCPs to use the EHR more effectively but will also help keep your brand’s drugs and treatments top-of-mind.

Add your brand’s drug therapy to EMA’s treatment protocols

EMA’s machine learning automation efficiently notes HCPs’ past behavior and prescribing choices, then uses them to offer diagnostic and treatment suggestions. While this is helpful to the HCP, it also reinforces prescribing habits, making them difficult for you to overcome, especially for launch brands.

One way to gain visibility for your brand is to reveal the EHR’s inner workings, explaining that its artificial intelligence (AI) engine shows only those medications previously prescribed by the HCP or other EMA users. Point out that new drugs, or drugs with new indications, must be added to protocols to show up as future recommendations.

This opens the door for sharing step-by-step instructions for making changes to EMA’s protocols with your HCPs and their practice. You’ll add value to their workflow by optimizing the EHR experience. And you’ll create a friction-free way for dermatologists to remember and prescribe your brand at the moment of care, without sacrificing clinical quality or patient safety.

Help your HCP create patient lists of qualifying candidates for your drug

Patient appointments must move along efficiently so dermatologists can make the most of their full schedules. Even when a prescriber is familiar with your brand, they don’t always immediately know whether the patients they see meet the criteria for a specific drug.

Showing dermatologists how to leverage EMA’s patient lists to identify appropriate patients for your brand’s therapy puts important prescribing information right at their fingertips. Share instructions with your HCPs for creating a list of patients that aligns demographic or diagnostic criteria with those specified in your medication’s package insert. You’ll save them time and help them identify appropriate patients at the moment of care.

Leverage pre-filled forms to make it easier to prescribe your drug

If your medication requires a specialty pharmacy form, HCPs often see that as a barrier to prescribing it. Finding and filling out medication enrollment and patient assistance forms takes time out of an HCP’s already overloaded day. Worse still, incomplete forms or those containing errors are sent back and require going through the process all over again, which is not only frustrating for the prescribing dermatologist but also delays getting patients what they need.

You can make it faster and easier for dermatologists to fill out medication enrollment and patient assistance forms using EMA’s automated PDF conversion feature. When you meet with a dermatologist to discuss a medication that requires a special form or provides patient assistance, bring an electronic copy of the PDF form with you. Offer to explain how to upload the PDF to EMA and tell them how to use the autofill function to save time and reduce errors associated with manually completing the forms.

Know and be ready to discuss the broader dermatology EHR landscape

While some HCPs readily adopt new therapies, others prefer to wait and observe the behaviors of their peers. However, most dermatologists have a limited view of their peers’ prescribing patterns, giving them an incomplete picture of which therapies they prefer.

If you guide the dermatologists in your territory to use EMA’s Outcomes and Grand Rounds features, you can present them with a more balanced, holistic perspective on which drugs their peers prescribe. These features draw on data and reports from other EHRs nationwide, applying a broader lens on how your medication is used. Discussing with your HCPs how they can shape Outcomes and Grand Rounds for other EMA users drives even more value by giving them a sense of agency and influence in their specialty.

How do you and your sales team learn to apply an EHR strategy?

These tips, while useful, require more “insider” EHR knowledge than most sales teams possess. That’s why we developed EHRconnect to enable sales teams to leverage the systems and workflows their dermatologists already use throughout their workdays.

EHRconnect combines training, resources, and tools to help you add value to your clinical conversations with your dermatology HCPs while driving awareness and boosting prescriptions for your brand’s treatments and therapies.