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General Concepts

Products

Products are your business’s individual “SKUs,” whether prescription or non-prescription. These entities contain descriptive information, pricing, your own product code/identifier, and other (generally) patient-facing information. Blend will manage underlying inventory for your products.

Prescribers

The healthcare professionals who will prescribe your prescription products, and who will be sending Electronic Prescriptions. Prescriber regulatory information (NPI/SPI), licensing credentials, supervisory relationships (if applicable), address/contact and biographical information are required to be kept up-to-date within Blend.

Electronic Prescriptions

Electronic Prescriptions, sent via either the Surescripts network or directly via API, are required to fill an order containing prescription products. Each prescription product in an order needs an active/non-expired prescription with fills remaining.

Patients

The individuals who will receive products directly fulfilled by Blend. Patient profiles in Blend must be kept up-to-date, including name, address, contact information, and (critically) any risk factors: allergies, drug interactions, pre-existing conditions, pregnancy state, etc.

Orders

Orders are the unification of the above that result in (in most cases) a filled prescription, packaged product(s) in your custom packaging, and a shipping box sent straight to your patient.

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Blend End-to-End

Each of the above is required to be created within Blend for an order to be filled end-to-end. For the most part, the above entities can be created in any order. Blend systems will match accordingly when all data is available. The happiest path, however, is the following:

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During Onboarding: Create Products and Prescribers

During your Blend onboarding, we will work with you to create initial products and match them accordingly with your own EMR or similar systems. We will likewise work with you to bulk import existing prescribers and their licensing and other information. Depending on your approach to existing patients and prospective refill prescriptions, we can also import / create patient records in advance.

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For New Patient Orders: Create (a New) Patient, Prescription, and Order

At the time of an order, your systems should be prepared to create the following entities within Blend.
  • A patient, using the /patients endpoint.
    • Alternatively, this can be created within an Order in a single request
    • Not applicable for refills, as patient data already exists
  • An electronic prescription (assuming the patient requires a prescribed product)
    • This can be sent via Surescripts, or directly via API (/prescriptions/electronic-prescription) depending on your integration
  • An order, using the /orders endpoint, containing the product(s) to be fulfilled by Blend
While a patient must be created before sending an order, a prescription can be sent at any time (even before patient creation). Blend will match accordingly regardless of which is created first.

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For Existing Patient Orders: Create a Prescription and Order

For existing patients (non-refill) orders, your system needs to only send:
  • An electronic prescription, either via Surescripts or directly via API
  • An order containing the product(s) to be fulfilled

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For Refill Orders: Create an Order

  • Refills of existing prescriptions can be fulfilled simply be sending a new order

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How Blend Matches Patients, Orders, Prescribers, Prescriptions and Products

There are a few key data fields Blend uses to match entities.

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Prescription to Patient

  • If directly provided via API, Blend will look for a patient’s id (Blend ID) or external_id (your own identifier that can be stored in Blend patient profiles).
  • For Surescripts prescriptions, Blend will match on patient name (or preferred name) and date of birth; or patient contact information and date of birth.

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Prescription to Prescriber

  • Prescribers will be matched based on NPI, DEA number, or SPI, with a fallback to name and date of birth

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Prescription to Product

  • If directly provided via API, Blend will look for a product ID (Blend ID) or product_code in your request
  • For Surescripts prescriptions, Blend will parse the <ProductCode>, the <DrugDescription> or <Note> fields for matches to your products’ sku, product_code, ID, or even its name.

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Prescription to Order

  • Because a patient must be sent with an order, Blend will leverage the above mapping to tie orders to prescriptions via patient-match.