Health IT Research & Analysis
Quick Stats

Hospital Adoption of Real-Time Benefit Tools

Last Updated

April 2026

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Percent of non-federal, acute care hospitals with EHRs that integrate health insurer real-time prescription benefit information.

As of 2025, 75% of hospitals reported that they integrated real-time prescription benefit information for at least some health plans/payers, with approximately 55% having that information for all plans. This is up slightly – 3 percentage points – from 2023.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services have required Medicare Part D plans to support a prescriber real time benefit tool since January 2021. The use of RTBTs is intended to inform prescribers when lower-cost alternative therapies are available under a patient’s prescription drug insurance benefit, which can improve medication adherence, lower prescription drug costs, and minimize beneficiary out-of-pocket costs. ONC finalized a new Health IT Certification Program criterion, Real-time prescription benefit, as part of the HTI-4 Final Rule, which adopts a standards-based method to provide this information to clinicians at the point of care when prescribing medications to patients.

 202220232025
Yes, for all or almost all payers50.2%56.2%55.4%
Yes, for a limited set of payers15.9%15.8%19.7%
No16.9%17.7%11.6%
Do not know16.9%10.3%13.3%

2022: 2,541 (59%)

2023: 2,547 (58%)

2025: 2,351 (54.5%)

Responses were weighted to reflect the distribution of hospital characteristics in the AHA Annual Survey. Inverse probability weights were then calculated based on the hospital size, region of the country, ownership type (for-profit, government, non-profit), teaching status, multihospital system membership status, urban or rural location, and the presence of a cardiac intensive care unit.