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Bloomberg
Surescripts, a company that enables electronic prescribing of drugs, terminated its contract with a vendor that it says improperly requested access to patients’ medication histories to give to Amazon.com’s PillPack subsidiary.
Surescripts, which is partially owned by two of the largest pharmacy-benefit managers, said in a statement it has alerted the FBI and stopped its vendor, ReMy Health, from accessing its network.
ReMy Health didn’t immediately return a message seeking comment. A spokeswoman for PillPack said that its customers authorise PillPack to assemble their medication history.
PillPack was previously warned that Surescripts might cut off its access to the data through ReMy, CNBC reported, citing unidentified sources.
Surescripts accused ReMy of breaking the terms of their contract by providing information about patients’ medication history improperly. That information, which resides in Surescripts’ systems, is supposed to be shared only with medical providers when delivering care or planning a patient’s discharge, Surescripts said.
“Pharmacists need a comprehensive understanding of the medications each customer is taking,†and customers permit PillPack to access their history, PillPack spokeswoman Jacquelyn Miller said in an email.
“Given that Surescripts is, to our knowledge, the sole clearinghouse for medication history in the United States, the core question is whether Surescripts will allow customers to share their medication history with pharmacies and if not, why not?†Miller said.
The contract termination is the latest twist in an ongoing fight between established players in the pharmacy supply chain and Amazon, which threatens to disrupt it. Amazon’s $1 billion purchase of PillPack last year sent shares of drugstore chains like CVS Health Corp and Walgreens Boots Alliance Inc tumbling.
Surescripts said it discovered that ReMy was providing the information to PillPack, though the requests for medication history never came from PillPack’s NPI.