ePrescribe: Getting Approved for EPCS

To be able to prescribe controlled substances, you will need at least one supporting user to approve your identity. 
This is a rule from the DEA. You can read more about this rule below.

You should have been asked to include this user upon sign up. If you don't have a supporting use yet, you can invite on with the below directions.

Adding Supporting Users:

Supporting users can view the "Prescriptions" tab on clients and queue up medications to practitioners.

To invite a support user:

1. Go to your ePrescribe settings
2. If you have other prescriber or assistants on your account, they will be listed below
   1. 
3. Choose whether you want the invitee to be a basic admin or a full admin for ePrescribe. This will control what they are able to do in their own ePrescribing account.
   1. Basic Scriptsure Admin
      1. User is permitted to change practice and clinical application settings
   2. Full Scriptsure Admin
      1. Check if this user permitted to Add, Invite and Edit users of the organization
      2. Important: You need at least one other user set as a full admin to approve you for EPCS the first time.
4. If you are inviting a practitioner but you don't want them to prescribe, uncheck the "Prescriber" checkbox before sending the invite. This checkbox is only used for invitations. You cannot control whether they are a prescriber or not from here after the invitation has been sent.
5. Click blue "Send Invitation Email". This will send them an email to sign up.
6. NOTE: Only Clinic admins and assistants to the admin have this option to invite new users to ePrescribe

Once the Supporting User is Set Up in ePrescribe

1. The supporting user must log in to Scriptsure to approve the prescriber for EPCS.
   1. If they are a user in intakeQ, they can go to the ePrescribe setting page and click the 'Open Prescription App' button on that page.
      1. Once they are in, they will see a screen like the below
      2. They will need to click the green button and approve the prescriber from the next screen
         
         1. 
   2. If they are not a user in the application, you can add them this way:
      1. Go to your ePrescribe settings
      2. Click the blue "Manage Prescription App"
      3. Click ADD USER top right and select add Invite Supporting user (NOTE: You must be an administrator already to perform this function).
      4. Enter another person’s name and email and check off both basic and full administrator.
      5. This user will then receive an email; they will need to click SETUP ACCOUNT from their email. (Their setup is essentially just setting a password and then they will be in ScriptSure).
      6. A pop-up that shows EPCS request will appear. The user clicks review and then APPROVE next to your name. This is all this user needs to do.

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DEA's Second User (Administrator) Requirement

The Controlled Substances Act (CSA), 21 U.S.C. 801-904, prevents the diversion of controlled substances into improper channels by requiring that controlled substances only be prescribed by practitioners registered with DEA (or exempt from the registration requirement). 

Thus, one of DEA's primary goals in the IFR was to ensure that non-registrants cannot improperly gain access to electronic prescription applications— i.e., the computer software practitioners use to electronically issue their prescriptions. Obviously, if non-registrants could gain access to these applications, they might be able to use them to fraudulently generate or alter electronic prescriptions for controlled substances, thereby diverting these controlled substances in violation of the CSA.

Thus, the IFR contains a number of measures designed to minimize, to the greatest extent possible, the potential for the diversion of controlled substances through such misuse of electronic prescription applications. These include the IFR's approaches to identity proofing (verifying that the user of an electronic prescription application is who he or she claims to be) and logical access control (verifying that the authenticated user has the authority to perform the requested action).

Under the IFR, a practitioner can only sign and issue an electronic prescription by using an authentication credential, and a practitioner can only receive such a credential after having his or her identity verified. For individual practitioners (as opposed to practitioners associated with an institutional practitioner registrant), such identity proofing is done by authorized third parties that, after verifying a registrant's identity, issue an authentication credential to the registrant. These third parties must be federally approved credential service providers (CSPs) or certification authorities (CAs).

Ultimately, this second user logs in once to approve the provider for prescribing.  Once complete, the prescriber can prescribe and the second user does not need to login again.