Winners were announced today in the 2021 People’s Choice Stevie® Awards for Favorite Companies, an annual feature of The International Business Awards®, the world’s only international, all-encompassing business awards program, which is in its 18^th year.

The worldwide public vote was conducted from mid-August through 1 October, with the highest number of votes deciding the winners in a variety of industries. More than 86,000 votes were cast. All Stevie Award winners in the Company/Organization of the Year categories in this year’s International Business Awards were eligible to be included in the public vote.

Winners of the crystal People’s Choice Stevie Awards will be honored during the IBAs’ virtual awards ceremony on Wednesday, 8 December. Registration for the event is now open. The winners of peer-adjudicated Gold, Silver and Bronze Stevie Awards, selected from more than 3,700 nominations received from organizations in more than 65 nations, will also be recognized during the ceremony.

The winners of the 2021 People’s Choice Stevie Awards for Favorite Companies are: 

• Advertising, Marketing & PR: DDB Group Philippines
• Aerospace & Defense: Modest Tree, Canada
• Apparel, Beauty & Fashion: Georgio's Bottega, USABanking: Ziraat Participation Bank, Turkey
• Business or Professional Services: Everise, Singapore
• Computer Services: Rimini Street, Inc., USA
• Consumer Products - Durable: Christie & Christie Pty Ltd, Australia
• Consumer Products - Non-Durable: Makers Nutrition, USA
• Consumer Services: Makers Nutrition, USA
• Diversified Services: Backwoods Promotions Inc., Canada
• Energy: Bahrain National Gas Company (B.S.C.)
• Financial Services: Avalara, USA
• Food & Beverage: Empire Eagle Food Co., Ltd, Taiwan
• Government, Non-Profit: Megaworld Foundation, Inc., Philippines
• Health, Pharmaceuticals: CCL Life Sciences, Pakistan
• Hospitality & Leisure: Kindersley Hospitality Endeavors, Canada
• Insurance: Thai Life Insurance, Thailand
• Manufacturing, Materials, Construction: Makati Development Corporation (MDC), Philippines
• Other Industries: Drop Stop®, USA
• Real Estate: Filinvest Alabang, Inc, Philippines
• Retail: Rhima, Australia
• Software: Applause, USA
• Telecommunications: Indosat Ooredoo, Indonesia
• Transportation: Geotab, Canada
• Utilities: Yesilirmak Electric Distribution Company, Turkey

Entries for The 19^th (2022) International Business Awards will be accepted starting in February.

More information is available at
www.StevieAwards.com/IBA.

• Boehringer Ingelheim and Dubai Health Authority take top prizes
• To be presented for the first time at a virtual award ceremony on 25 August

The Stevie® Awards today announced the Grand Stevie Award winners in the first annual Middle East Stevie Awards.  The winners will be honored during a virtual award ceremony on 25 August. Registration for the virtual award ceremony is now ongoing.

The Middle East Stevie Awards, sponsored by the Ras Al Khaimah Chamber of Commerce & Industry, is an international business awards competition open to all organizations in 17 nations in the Middle East and North Africa. The focus of the awards is recognizing innovation in all its forms.  

This year more than 500 nominations were considered in the judging process by more than 70 professionals, whose average ratings determined the Gold, Silver, and Bronze Stevie Award winners announced earlier this year. For a complete list of the 2020 Stevie Award winners, visit https://stevieawards.com/mena/2020-stevie%C2%AE-award-winners

In addition to the Gold, Silver and Bronze Stevie awards, the top winner overall (total number of points conferred by total Gold, Silver and Bronze Stevie wins) and the highest-scoring nomination win Grand Stevie Award trophies.

A German-based, family-owned company, Boehringer Ingelheim is considered one of the pharmaceutical industry’s top 20 companies. In the inaugural Middle East Stevie Awards, Boehringer Ingelheim will receive the Grand Stevie for Organization of the Year with 23.5 award points, earned for six Gold, two Silver, and one Bronze Stevie Award wins.

"We believe that digital technologies offer exciting new ways to help patients around the world.  Health is what we care about; digital technologies help us to provide it. New tools nourish our passion for innovation and help ideas grow.  We are focused on delivering international best practices, innovative medical trends, while also ramping up our research and development capabilities, to address the diverse needs of patients in the country and region "said Evren Özlü, General Manager & Head of HP, Turkey

Dubai Health Authority’s nomination of diagnostic and prognostic liquid biopsy biomarkers for asthma was awarded the Gold Stevie Award for Innovation in Medical or Dental, and because it received the highest overall average score from the judges, of all nominations submitted in the 2020 competition, will also receive the Grand Stevie Award for Highest-Rated Nomination of the Year.

In the inaugural Middle East Stevie Awards, Dubai Health Authority won four Gold and one Silver Stevies for their Smart Home Care and Smart Health Professional licensing initiatives, as well as their innovative new approaches to early detection, diagnoses and treatments for asthma, sepsis, and childhood developmental disabilities. 

Dr. Younis Kazim, CEO of Dubai Healthcare Corporation from Dubai Health Authority commented, commented on the win by saying: “Dubai Health Authority are pleased to add a distinguished set of new prizes to its collection of prestigious international awards. Recognition with a Grand Stevie Award is the result of the great efforts made by the authority’s team to promote innovation and introduce smart services to facilitate the customer’s journey, and their continuous offering of improvement projects for services provided to individual or institutional clients.

Usually the two Grand Stevie Award winners are announced live at the award ceremony. However, due to the current development of the COVID19 pandemic, the Stevie Awards had to cancel the in-person award ceremony that was to take place on 21 March at the Waldorf Astoria Hotel in Ras Al Khaimah, United Arab Emirates. A virtual Stevie Awards ceremony will instead be offered on 25 August, 2020 in which the winners of the first Middle East Stevie Awards will be honored.

"We were very sad that the award ceremony could not take place in Ras Al Khaimah. It's always a very special moment to present the award winners with their awards," said Maggie Gallagher, president of the Stevie Awards. "That's why we are all the more pleased that we can now offer the winners of the Middle East Stevie Awards 2020 a virtual award ceremony in which our Stevie Award winners may be recognized and celebrated from the safety of their homes and offices.”

The Trophies for all winners will be shipped before the 25 August Ceremony so the winners can have their red-carpet pictures and record their acceptance speech holding their trophies. Orders should be made before 1 July 2020.

Complete information about the virtual awards ceremony is available at https://stevieawards.com/mena/2020-virtual-awards-ceremony-registration.

The virtual awards ceremony will feature digital versions of all of the things that people love about Stevie Awards events, including the networking, acceptance speeches, red carpet photographs, and red carpet interviews.   A series of informative webinars this summer will also be offered to virtual ceremony participants.

If you, as a representative of the press, is interested in participating in the virtual award ceremony of the Middle East Stevie Awards on 25 August at 2 p.m GMT., please contact us at help+MENA@stevieawards.com.

The submission phase of the second edition of the awards will begin in September 2020.

Interested in entering the 2021 Middle East Stevie Awards?

Professionals in IT operations often resolve issues by automating scripting or coding.

Why use automation?

Throughout the past two decades, technological innovations and information delivery systems have spurred unprecedented growth. The continued evolution of tech, as well as human ingenuity, present organizations across the retail, manufacturing, telecom, banking, and financial services sectors with an array of ever-expanding scenarios and challenges. As just a few examples, being connected continues to become cheaper, and device ownership is skyrocketing.

Data volumes are soaring, and billions of new connected data sources are anticipated within a few years. We are quickly approaching exabyte volumes and are surging toward zettabytes, and the growth of mobile connectivity continues to surpass fixed lines. Security is, as always, a major issue, along with regulatory complexity.

These automations, however, often only work within a monolithic and extremely predictive environment. If one thing changes in that environment, it typically results in the automation failing within the system. Once this happens, an IT professional must begin the troubleshooting process, which might take anywhere from five to thirty minutes to complete. This increases a company’s internal costs and bogs down IT resources.

Are Humans and Artificial Intelligence (AI) Destined to Work Together?

IT has revolutionized businesses across global industries. The way IT operates in most enterprises, however, is still very people-centric, which means the industry is prime for robotic or runbook automation initiatives. Having a fairly straightforward goal of achieving direct cost savings, these automations can reduce the manual effort spent on repetitive activities.

Robotic process automation (RPA) is great for a predictive environment, but it’s not necessarily designed for an ever-changing landscape. It lacks, therefore, the agility to successfully handle many scenarios. To see better results, the automation efforts need to be cognitive and intelligent.

While script-based automation yields quick, small wins, most organizations soon realize the accelerating pace of business-related changes, the increasing complexity of technology and operations, and rising technology-based operational risks far outmatch traditional automation capabilities. There is a critical need, therefore, for an intelligent system that can keep up with technology churn, understand business processes, and be customized to an industry domain and business model.

Many companies praise automation like it’s already the backbone of their business platforms, but human intervention within that automation is still largely necessary. Companies like Digitate try to be aware of this (currently) inescapable reality by working with top brands in virtually every industry. By continuing to improve their product capabilities, service delivery, and customer support, they can build a community of dedicated users who are excited about sharing their stories with them.

Digitate™ leverages machine learning and artificial intelligence to manage IT and business operations. Their product, ignio™, enables better decision-making and ultimately solves IT operations challenges.

Other companies that also leverage machine learning and AI to manage IT and business operations are still working on developing an overarching process that can understand system needs across dynamic situations from different sectors. This is a daunting task, though, and something no one has been able to achieve—yet.

Digitate recently won a Silver Stevie® Award in the Software Defined Infrastructure category at the 2019 International Business Awards®.

Interested in entering The International Business Awards this year? They open for entries on February 4, 2020. 

The Stevie® Awards announced today the Grand Stevie Award winners in The 17th Annual American Business Awards^® competition. Winners will be presented their Grand Stevie Awards trophies at the ABA’s gala banquet on June 11 in New York.

All organizations operating in the U.S.– large and small, public and private, for-profit and non-profit—are eligible to submit nominations to the ABAs in a wide range of categories, honoring achievement in every aspect of work life, from customer service and management to public relations and product development.

More than 3,800 nominations submitted to the 2019 competition were reviewed and rated in the judging process by more than 200 professionals, whose average scores determined the Gold, Silver, and Bronze Stevie Award winners who were announced earlier this month. The June 11 awards presentations will be broadcast live via Livestream.

Grand Stevie Award winners were determined by a points system in which Gold Stevie-winning nominations are granted three points, Silver Stevies two points, and Bronze Stevies one and a half points.

Grand Stevie winners are as follows:

Organization of the Year: Melissa Sones Consulting, a New York-based communications consultancy focused on researching and writing awards nominations for clients, is the most honored organization in the 2019 ABAs, with 37 award points earned for Gold, Silver, and Bronze Stevie Award wins on behalf of clients including CBK Partners, Momentum Design Lab, Sleepm Global, and the West Point Association of Graduates, among others.

Most Honored Interactive Agency: The XD Agency, a strategic communications agency focused on experience design, with offices in Atlanta, New York, and San Francisco, is recognized with 23 awards points earned for work for clients including the Aircraft Owners and Pilots Association, Cisco, the Experimental Aircraft Association, Mercedes-Benz, Porsche, and TradeRev.

Most Honored Marketing Partner: Publicis Sapient, the digital business transformation hub of Publicis Groupe, earned 30 award points with Stevie wins on behalf of clients Bridgestone, Fiat Chrysler, MGM, the Ontario Energy Board, and Samsung.

Most Honored Public Relations Agency: Method Communications, with offices in Salt Lake City and San Francisco, earned 28 award points with Stevie-winning nominations on behalf of clients Age of Learning, Aptive Environmental, O.C. Tanner, PagerDuty, Podium, and Valimail.

Top 10: The following 12 organizations will also receive Grand Stevie Award trophies for being among the most recognized organizations in the 2019 ABAs.

1. Jeunesse Global, Orlando, FL (27 points)
2. PAN Communications, on behalf of multiple clients (22)
3. Reltio, Redwood Shores, CA (21)
4. 5W Public Relations, on behalf of multiple clients (20)
5. (tie) George P Johnson Experiential Marketing, Auburn Hills, MI (19)
   John Hancock Financial Services, Boston, MA (19)
6. Finn Partners, on behalf of multiple clients (18.5)
7. (tie) Comcast Business, Philadelphia, PA (17)
   Cisco, San Jose, CA (17)
8. (tie) Lycored, Orange, NJ (15.5)
   Bhava Communications, on behalf of multiple clients (15.5)
   ADP, Roseland, NJ (15.5)

For a complete list of the 2019 Stevie Award winners, visit http://www.StevieAwards.com/ABA.

Fourth Annual Awards Honoring Employers and HR Professionals is Accepting Nominations

The Stevie Awards has issued the call for entries for the fourth annual Stevie® Awards for Great Employers, which honor the world’s best companies to work for and the human resources teams, professionals, suppliers, and new products and services that help to create and drive great places to work.

All individuals and organizations worldwide—public and private, for-profit, and non-profit, large and small—may submit nominations to the Stevie Awards for Great Employers. The early-bird entry deadline, with reduced entry fees, is May 1. The final entry deadline is June 5, but late entries will be accepted through July 17 with payment of a late fee. Entry details are available at www.StevieAwards.com/HR.

REVIEW THE ENTRY KIT HERE.

An international judging panel of more than 50 executives will determine the Stevie Award winners. Finalists will be announced on August 15. Gold, Silver, and Bronze Stevie Award winners will be revealed and presented their awards at a gala event in New York City on September 20.

The Stevie Awards for Great Employers recognize achievement in many facets of the workplace. Categories include:

• Employer of the Year Awards
• HR Achievement Awards
• HR Individual Awards
• HR Team Categories
• Solution Provider Awards
• New Product & Service Categories
  • Software
  • Training Programs or Media
  • Curated Training Platform of the Year

There are many new categories in 2019 for HR achievements including Best CSR Strategy, Best Leadership Development Program, Best Learning & Development Strategy, Best Reward & Recognition Strategy, Best Talent Management Strategy, Best Use of People Analytics, and more. Under the HR Individual Awards the new category is Rising HR Star of the Year.

Winners in the 35 industry-specific Employer of the Year categories will be determined by a unique blend of public votes and professional ratings. Public voting will take place from July 23–August 12.

Stevie Award winners in 2018 included Allianz Partners, AstraZeneca / MedImmune, Benefax, Ceridian, Citizens Bank, Daimler AG, Deutche Telekom Services Europe GmbH, ej4, Gamelearn, Globe Telecom, Smile Brands, SweetRush, TaskUs, VESTEL, and many more.

Worldwide research shows that gender bias in the workplace is improving, but there’s still a long way to go. Although perceptions of gender roles naturally change over time, many organizations and individuals want to do their part to make current conditions as fair as possible for everyone at work.

 2A Consulting is just one example of a company doing what it can to promote equality in the workplace. The marketing agency focuses on storytelling for business, striving to blend strategic and creative efforts to create assets that captivate customers. From the top down, the leadership team at 2A Consulting puts best practices in place that help improve gender equality across the company.

Using All the Talent Available to You

Having diverse sources of talent and ideas can help a company take full advantage of significant changes happening in your market. Understanding this, Abby Breckenridge, partner at 2A Consulting, has made a point to recognize and advance women who do great work.

Two actions in particular have helped 2A Consulting nurture women as consultants and managers. The first: speaking up. Breckenridge realized that getting men and women alike to squelch gender inequality had to start with acknowledging unfair practices or mistreatment. Even a lack of information about women returning to work after pregnancy can lead to unintended bias.  

The second: being open to doing things differently. The flip side of speaking up, this best practice is all about listening and observing. Breckenridge leads by example at 2A Consulting. She shows her team how to acknowledge and accept when something isn’t working, and models a mature, collaborative path to a solution.

With advances in artificial intelligence, cloud computing, IT infrastructure, and more, companies across the globe are constantly seeking to modernize their ways of doing business. One of the best ways to ensure your company thrives during change, however, is to consider and nurture the talent at your disposal without bias. To maximize resources, a company must avoid preferential treatment and advance employees regardless of gender.

Sending the Right Message

Valuing team members has been one source of 2A Consulting’s success, while another has been the company’s approach to marketing. Many times, marketing agencies immediately jump to crafting campaigns with impactful words, but these efforts often lack broader context and, ultimately, fall flat for customers. A cohesive story, after all, is a strong framework for effective marketing.

Figuring out the best way to broadcast your core value to customers is no minor task. In competitive markets, something as simple as sending the right message can be the deciding factor in whether a customer chooses your business or someone else’s.

“We help businesses lock onto the stories they're trying to tell—whether it's for a product launch or a keynote presentation,” said Abby Breckenridge, partner at 2A Consulting. “Our consultants work with clients to formulate the message, distill it down, and then build it into assets in a way that resonates. This way, companies can make lasting connections with customers.”

As good marketers know, there’s often a large difference between what a company sells (the product) and what customers are really buying (the solution to their problem). That’s why it’s important to be as clear as possible with your messaging and to think about your audience when crafting that story.

Consider what you can do within your organization to encourage an environment that’s more inclusive, makes use of all its untapped talent, and, ultimately, brings in more successful prospects.

2A Consulting recently earned a Bronze Stevie® Award for being one of the fastest-growing companies in the United States.

The Stevie® Awards, organizer of The American Business Awards®, announced today that the final entry deadline for the 17^th annual ABA competition has been extended to Wednesday, April 17.   Nominations submitted after the original final deadline of March 13 will not incur any additional late fees, and will not be penalized in the judging process in any way.

 “We’ve received so many requests for individual deadline extensions that we’ve decided to extend the deadline for everyone,” said Stevie Awards president Michael Gallagher. The original final deadline was March 13.

GET THE ENTRY KIT HERE

The American Business Awards are widely considered to be the premier business awards program in the U.S.A. All organizations operating in the U.S.A. are eligible to submit nominations— public and private, for-profit and non-profit, large, and small. The 2019 awards will honor achievements since the beginning of 2018. Entry details are available at http://www.StevieAwards.com/ABA.

The American Business Awards recognize achievement in every facet of the workplace. Categories include:

• Entrepreneur Awards
• Management Awards
• Company of the Year Awards
• Customer Service Awards
• Human Resources Awards
• Information Technology Awards
• Marketing Awards
• New Product Awards
• Public Relations Awards
• Website Awards, Smartphone and Tablet Apps, and other Media Awards

In the Marketing, New Product & Service, and Public Relations categories, nominees may now submit a video of up to five minutes in length, instead of the traditional written Stevie Awards essay or case study.  In categories for business-related media, there are many new Live Event, Publication, and Video categories.

More than 200 executives on 13 juries have already begun the process of rating nominations to determine the Gold, Silver, and Bronze Stevie Award winners.

Stevie winners will be announced on May 1, and the awards will be presented at a gala banquet on June 11 at the Marriott Marquis Hotel in New York City. Attendance is not required to win.

The list of past Stevie Award winners in The American Business Awards reads like a who’s who of innovation and business success in the U.S.A. Explore the list of last year’s winners.

Ask executives about their biggest priorities, and you might hear plans to grow sales, to generate efficient systems, or to develop new product lines.

Jillian Hamilton’s mission is to remind corporate leaders they should also focus on threats that seemingly come out of nowhere: an expensive fine from regulators, a large-scale cyberattack, or a costly workplace accident.

For Hamilton, founder and managing director of Australian risk advisory firm Manage Damage, organizations tend to be under-invested in certain areas. The reason? It’s hard to put a dollar amount on the potential damage an incident will produce.

A corporate safety officer and risk manager by background, Hamilton decided to change that dynamic. She launched Manage Damage in 2016 with what she calls a “risk dollarization” approach, in which nonfinancial risk is translated into a financial cost.

“Our method provides senior management members with risk information in language they understand,” says Hamilton. “It enables businesses to see where issues lie and where true associated costs are located.”

Monetizing Risk

By putting a dollar value on risk, she says leaders are more likely to act on the threats most likely to cripple a business. As an example, she points to a client whose workers’ compensation premiums were so high the entire business was on the brink of shutting down. In an industry where workers’ insurance normally accounts for 6.5 percent of an operating budget, the company was paying more than 16 percent.

After working with Manage Damage, which is based in Brisbane, Australia, the company was able to significantly curtail its expenses and improve profit margins.

“We often find the businesses we help are not even aware of how much they are paying,” Hamilton says. “More importantly, they are not aware that what they are paying is far too much.”

Hamilton will sometimes hear people object to putting a monetary value on a human life, but for her, there’s a simple way to think about this dilemma.

“Each person who works at a business is valued,” she says. “Today, you are costed at your business, and you are part of a line item in a budget.”

That number, she says, includes salary, taxes, retirement contributions, and insurance payments made on your behalf. However, she believes monetizing a potential accident only makes the workplace safer for workers.

“It’s vital we create this financially savvy safety approach precisely because I care deeply about minimizing work-induced harm,” she says. “A pragmatic approach that effectively translates safety risk into terms business and financial people can understand has the best possible chance of delivering that outcome.”

Though it only launched a couple of years ago, the company is quickly winning converts, and Manage Damage now has clients in five continents. At the 2018 Asia-Pacific Stevie® Awards, the company won a Gold award for Innovation in Human Resources Management, Planning, and Practice. They also won a Gold in The 2018 International Business Awards®.

The company is certainly benefiting from a rising tide concerning risk awareness. A 2017 survey by risk management association RIMS found that nearly three-quarters of businesses have either a complete or partially integrated enterprise risk management solution in place, up from about half in 2013. Hamilton, though, sees her company’s approach as a particularly effective solution.

“Money talks,” she says. “When you start talking about the costs of safety, people listen. They listen when it is in the newspaper—that is, when it's far too late. We aim to capture people’s attention before incidents and workplace disasters. Follow the money, and listen to where business risk truly lies.”

The Stevie® Awards has issued a call for entries for the 2019 (sixth annual) Asia-Pacific Stevie Awards, the only business awards program to recognize innovation in business throughout the entire Asia-Pacific region. 

The early-bird entry deadline is November 28. The final entry deadline is January 30, 2019, but late entries will be accepted through March 8 with the payment of a late fee. Complete entry details are available at http://Asia.StevieAwards.com.

The Asia-Pacific Stevie Awards are open to all organizations in the 29 nations of the Asia-Pacific region: Large and small, for-profit and non-profit, public and private. Seven nations are added to those eligible to submit nominations to the 2019 Asia-Pacific Stevie Awards: Bangladesh, Bhutan, India, Maldives, Nepal, Pakistan, and Sri Lanka.

The awards focus on recognizing innovation in all its forms, wherever it is achieved in the workplace. Entries will be accepted in eight languages – Chinese, English, Indonesian, Japanese, Korean, Malay, Thai and Vietnamese - in the following awards category groups:

• Annual Report Awards & Other Publication Awards
• Customer Service Awards
• Company/Organization Awards
• Human Resources Awards
• Information Technology Awards
• Management Awards
• Marketing Awards
• New Product Awards
• Corporate Communications, IR, and PR Awards
• Website Awards and Smartphone and Tablet App Awards
  …and more

New awards categories introduced for 2019 include Most Innovative Startup of the Year and Most Innovative Tech Startup of the Year. There are no entry fees for the these categories.

Asia-Pacific Stevie Award winners will be announced on April 17. Winners will be celebrated and presented their awards during a gala banquet on May 31 in Singapore.

Scores of professionals from throughout the region will participate in the judging process to determine the Stevie winners.

Some of the Asia-Pacific region’s most innovative organizations have won Asia-Pacific Stevie Awards in the past five years including ABS-CBN Corporation, Bangkok Health Research Center, Cisco Systems, Delta Air Lines, Dentsu, Freelancer.com, GE Indonesia, Globe Telecom, Hong Kong Tourism Board, Huawei, Maras Group, MetLife Asia Ltd., MSLGROUP China, Ooredoo, PT Petrokimia Gresik, Samsung, Seoul Metropolitan Government, Singapore Power, Sony, Telkom Indonesia, Xiaomi, and more.

The Stevie Award trophies, made by the company that makes the Emmy and other major international awards, are among the world's most coveted prizes. The name Stevie is taken from the name Stephen, which is derived from the Greek for "crowned."

There’s nothing more aggravating for a healthcare patient than driving to a pharmacy to pick up a prescription and then learning his or her insurance company won’t cover the cost.

It’s a frustrating scenario for retailers and doctors, too. A significant portion of the medications the pharmacy staff fill won’t be taken home by the patient. Providers then have to go back to the beginning, contacting insurance providers to see if another drug will be covered by the patient’s insurance plan.

The shift toward electronic prior authorization, or ePA, is trying to put the brakes on those system inefficiencies. This trend has been steadily gaining momentum, thanks to wider electronic health record (EHR) usage and new state-level laws aimed at cutting medical costs and improving patient outcomes.

For those who work in the health care industry, it can be hard to keep up with all those developments. Each year, the technology firm CoverMyMeds works with an advisory group of industry experts to publish the annual ePA National Adoption Scorecard, which highlights the progress of ePA in the United States. Readers get up-to-date information on individual state mandates involving prior authorization, as well as updates on what’s happening at the federal level.

The 2018 edition of the scorecard also includes sections on two new areas of opportunity: real-time prescription benefits (RTPB) and solutions geared toward specialty medications.

“As electronic prior authorization implementation continues to increase, the industry is looking for new ways to enhance ePA functionality to benefit industry stakeholders, to continue fueling adoption from pharmacists and providers, and to benefit the patient,” says Perry Lewis, VP of industry relations at CoverMyMeds, whose main offices are in Cleveland and Columbus, Ohio, United States.

The latest version of the innovative report earned the company a Gold Stevie® Award for the Best Annual Report in the Online/Electronic category at The 16^th Annual American Business Awards..

“The Stevie Award validates all the hard work we put together on our scorecard,” said the CoverMyMeds VP of industry relations, Lewis, at the awards ceremony.

Automating the Process

Even today, many prior authorization requests to the pharmacy and health plan are completed manually—usually by phone or fax. This time-consuming process often leads to patients to abandoning their prescriptions at the pharmacy 36 percent of the time, according to CoverMyMeds.

That creates perils for the patient, who sees an increased risk of future health complications by not taking a prescribed medication. It also means the various players in the health care industry—providers, pharmacies, and insurance plans—allocate unnecessary resources to getting a drug approved. The scorecard notes, for example, that providers who rely exclusively on electronic preauthorization spend 2.5 fewer hours a week on these tasks.

It’s no wonder, then, the sector is quickly gravitating toward ePA, a trend that the proliferation of electronic health records has aided over the past several years. ePA streamlines the process by allowing a physician or other provider to initiate the approval while using the e-prescribing feature of the EHR.

“The most successful ePA strategies also connect the pharmacy to initiate an ePA that was missed at the point of prescribing, and they allow the provider to complete a pharmacy-initiated PA electronically in their EHR or in a designated ePA web portal,” the scorecard says.

Today, 90 percent of insurance payers use ePA, and 96 percent are committed to implementing the method soon. Meanwhile, virtually every pharmacy chain in the country has expressed an intention to use ePA. A growing number of states are adopting ePA language aimed at speeding up the usage rate.

Since its inception in 2008, CoverMyMeds has been at the forefront on this industry change, offering a platform that incorporates nearly every payer and prescription drug on the market. The company, which McKesson Corporation acquired in April 2017, now works with more than 500 EHRs, 62,000 pharmacies, and 700,000 providers in the United States.

The organization launched its yearly National Adoption Scorecard in 2015 as a way to help key stakeholders stay current on legislative updates and other news involving ePA implementation.

The Stevie win not only gave CoverMyMeds a valuable accolade but helped motivate the company to build on the scorecard’s success.

“Since learning about the award,” Lewis says, “the team decided to create a second report that provides an objective overview of real-time benefit check, a technology innovation that surfaces patient-specific prescription benefit details at the point of prescribing.”

References: https://www.covermymeds.com/main/insights/rtbc-scorecard/