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Electronic prescribing (eRx) is a key component of the meaningful use of health IT to improve health care quality and lower costs. This dataset includes county-level electronic prescribing (eRx) and health information exchange activity by community pharmacies and office-based health care providers active through the Surescripts Network. Surescripts is a health information network, and ONC procured electronic prescribing activity data conducted within its network from December 2008 through April 2014. The Surescripts network is used by the majority of all U.S. community pharmacies to rout prescriptions, excluding closed systems such as Kaiser Permanente. These include chain, franchise, and independently owned pharmacies. Data for annual percentages of new and renewal prescriptions routed through the Surescripts network exclude controlled substances. You may view more information about Surescripts, contact the company, and access more network data through the company’s official site.
Data Field
Data Description
region
Region // The region name for the data. This includes all 50 states and the District of Columbia.
region_code
Region Code // The abbreviation code for the region name. This includes all 50 states and the District of Columbia.
period
Time Period // Time period for the data. The first four digits correspond to the year of the data, and any other digits refer to the month of the data, beginning with “01”/January and ending with “12”/December.
county_name
County Name // The county name corresponding to the specific line of data.
state_fips
State Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) // The Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) code for the region. This is a double-digit number; if any appear as a single digit, the field should be re-coded so that all single digits have a “0”. For example, if the state FIPS appears as “1”, it should be re-coded to appear as “01”. This only applies for codes, “1” through “9”.
county_fips
County Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) // The Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) code for the county name. This is a three-digit number; if any appear as anything less than three digits, the field should be re-coded. For example, if the county FIPS appears as “1”, it should be re-coded to appear as “001”, and if it appears as “11”, it should be re-coded to appear as “011”.
fips
Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) // The Federal Information Processing Standard (FIPS) code for the region and county. Simply, the state FIPS and county FIPS are combined to create a single processing standard. This unique code applies to a unique county in a unique state. This is a five-digit number; if any appear as a four digit number, the field should be re-coded. For example, if the FIPS appears as “1001”, it should be re-coded to appear as “01001”.
pct_phys_e_Rx_ehr
Percent of Physicians Actively Using an EHR to e-Prescribe via the Surescripts Network // The proportion of all medical doctors that actively e-prescribe. The denominators for this measure are taken from the SK&A Office-based Provider database. County-level counts of MDs are used to approximate the percentage of all MDs that actively e-Prescribe.
See the Surescripts company website for more information on how network data is collected and prepared for dissemination and analysis.
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