By Pooja Babbrah, Executive Vice President, Strategy and Industry Alignment, NCPDP
We’ve all been there. You go to the doctor, get a prescription, and head to the pharmacy, only to find out they don’t have the medication in stock. What should be a routine part of your care turns into a stressful series of phone calls or visits to multiple pharmacies, trying to find one that can fill the prescription.
This situation is more common than many realize. As of early 2025, the
FDA reports that over 200 medications are on its national shortage list, including treatments for infections, cancer, and chronic conditions. For patients on multiple specialty medications, the situation can be even worse. In these moments, delays in care can have serious consequences.
This growing access challenge is exactly what the Pharmacy Product Availability Pilot Program, a collaboration between Assistant Secretary for Technology Policy (ASTP) and NCPDP, aims to solve. The pilot is designed to make it easier for prescribers to know if a pharmacy has a specific medication in stock before sending the prescription, helping avoid treatment delays and improving the patient experience.
Why This Matters
Healthcare providers and patients alike are no strangers to the frustration of tracking down medications. Whether it's searching for hard-to-find specialty therapies or treatments in short supply, the process is often inefficient and time-consuming. A very personal example, during a recent COVID-19 spike, my sister and I had to call five different pharmacies across the town we grew up in to locate Paxlovid for our elderly parents. This scenario is all too common.
The pilot builds on a key recommendation from the Pharmacy Interoperability and Emerging Therapeutics Task Force, part of the Health Information Technology Advisory Committee (HITAC). One of the top recommendations and a priority coming out of the task force was improving transparency around medication availability, especially when it comes to specialty medications and those listed on the FDA drug shortage list.
Laying the Groundwork
NCPDP had already been exploring solutions to this issue. In early 2024, an existing task group was redirected to explore new use cases that could help address the medication access gap. The team defined five use cases, with this pilot focusing specifically on Use Case 3: enabling prescribers to find out if a selected pharmacy has the needed medication before the prescription is sent.
To support the pilot, a JSON API transaction, along with a data schema, was created and an implementation guide was created. This transaction is a stand-alone one that sits outside of the NCPDP SCRIPT ePrescribing standard. The transaction provides a basic yes or no answer about whether the medication is available. If not, the system can also indicate when the pharmacy expects to receive all or the remaining medication needed to fill the prescription.
Pilot Goals and Participation
This six-month pilot is all about learning and refining. The goals are to:
- Gather real-world insights into how the process works for prescribers, pharmacies, and patients.
- Improve the implementation guide based on participant feedback.
- Show what’s possible when the industry collaborates on better interoperability and data exchange.
A Cross-Industry Effort
Multiple teams have been defined for the pilot, representing a wide range of healthcare stakeholders:
Prescriber Agents include:
- Digital health providers
- Long-term care providers
- Traditional healthcare providers
Pharmacy Agents include:
- National home delivery pharmacies
- Independent pharmacies
- Independent pharmacy system vendors
- Inventory management system vendors
Intermediary Agents include:
- Software vendors are committed to improving pharmacy and provider workflow
Why This Matters to Everyone
Each group involved has strong reasons for participating.
- Prescriber Agents want to create a better experience for their patients by helping them avoid delays or multiple attempts to access medications. Improving first fill rates can also lead to better health outcomes and reduced administrative burden for care teams.
- Pharmacy Agents see this as a way to set clearer expectations for patients and ensure that prescribers are aware of what is available at the point of care. They see this new workflow as a way to improve pharmacy operations and strengthen customer satisfaction.
- Intermediary Agents are eager to help enable smoother interoperability between systems and stakeholders. They recognize the value of removing friction in the prescription fulfillment process.
We’re proud to have participation from a diverse group of organizations, including DoseSpot, CareServices, TransferMyRx, RealTimeRx, Scriptly, PrimeRx, Amazon Pharmacy, InStockRx, D.A.W. Systems, Inc. and DrFirst.
Looking Ahead
As the pilot progresses, NCPDP and ASTP will continue gathering feedback and refining the approach to ensure it meets the needs of the industry. A final report is expected later this year, which will provide key findings and help inform the next steps.
While the technology may be behind the scenes, the goal is very human. It’s about making sure that patients can get the medications they need, when they need them, without unnecessary delays or stress. And it’s about showing that, together, we can build smarter, more connected healthcare solutions.