The following press-release arrived a few days ago.
http://www.healthtransformation.net/cs/news/news_detail?pressrelease.id=1818
Center Releases New White Paper on Electronic Prescribing: Written and Endorsed by Industry-wide Coalition
CHT Founder and Democratic Senator John Kerry Collaborate to Coauthor Foreword
FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Tuesday, June 11, 2008 Michelle S. Stein
(202) 375-2063
Washington, DC (June 11, 2008)—The Center for Health Transformation released today anew white paper on electronic prescribing that presents a comprehensive look at the technology, its benefits in saving lives and saving money, and how to overcome the barriers to its widespread adoption. The Center brought together a broad coalition of member organizations to author this work, from physicians and hospitals, to health insurers, pharmacy benefit managers and technology leaders.
The paper provides policymakers and industry leaders a comprehensive look at the benefits of e-prescribing, supporting the Institute of Medicine’s recommendation for all prescriptions to be written electronically by 2010. The paper includes experiences, perspectives and analyses that conclude that e-prescribing is an intelligent, efficient technology that improves patient safety and saves money by eliminating the inefficiencies of a paper-based system.
“Health information technology and the use of electronic prescribing is the one issue that everyone in healthcare can agree upon,” said Speaker Newt Gingrich. “The breadth of the organizations that contributed to and actively support this report clearly demonstrates the unanimity.”
The paper is timely as Congressional lawmakers debate The Medicare Electronic Medication and Safety Protection (E-MEDS) Act, a key part of the current discussions regarding physician payment in Medicare. Introduced by Massachusetts Senator John Kerry and supported by a bipartisan group of policymakers, the E-MEDS bill creates an incentive program to encourage Medicare physicians to adopt e-prescribing.
“Healthcare in America needs to move out of the dark ages and into the 21st century,” said Senator Kerry. “With technology like e-prescribing we will undoubtedly save lives, improve quality and lower costs. This paper makes an important contribution to the debate.”
The paper was written collaboratively by Center members, including: Allscripts; American Hospital Association; American Medical Group Association; Availity; Blue Cross Blue Shield Association; Covisint; Chrysler LLC; HCA – Hospital Corporation of America; Healthvision; InterComponentWare (ICW); MedImpact Healthcare Systems, Inc.; Microsoft; MinuteClinic; Misys; Pharmaceutical Care Management Association; RxHub, LLC; Sanford Health; SureScripts; UnitedHealthcare; WellPoint, Inc.; and Zix Corporation.
The paper can be downloaded at The Center’s homepage at www.healthtransformation.net.
The eHealth Initiative, in partnership with the Center for Improving Medication Management, also released a report today on electronic prescribing. That report can be found at www.ehealthinitiative.org and www.thecimm.org.
About the Center for the Health Transformation: The Center for Health Transformation is a high-impact collaboration of private and public sector leaders committed to creating a 21st Century Intelligent Health System that saves lives and saves money for all Americans.
For more information, please contact:
Michelle Stein
Center for Health Transformation
Tel: (202) 375-2063
Fax: 202-375-2036
The first report can be found here:
The eHealth Initiaitve Release can be found here:
http://www.ehealthinitiative.org/medicationManagement/default.mspx
eHealth Initiative and The Center for Improving Medication Management Release National Roadmap and Practical Guides for Rapid Expansion of Electronic Prescribing
Multi-stakeholder Group Touts Benefits from E-Prescribing and Makes Recommendations on How to Accelerate its Adoption and Effective Use
WASHINGTON – JUNE 11, 2008 – A new report indicates more than 35 million prescription transactions were sent electronically in 2007, a 170 percent increase over the previous year. The report, “Electronic Prescribing: Becoming Mainstream Practice,” offers a detailed examination of the progress made, obstacles that remain, and recommendations for helping the nation’s prescribers migrate from paper-based prescriptions to an electronic system.
The report, developed collaboratively by the eHealth Initiative (eHI) and The Center for Improving Medication Management (The Center) with guidance and leadership from a diverse Steering Group of health care stakeholders, summarizes the national experience with e-prescribing over the past four years – from its pilot phase in several states such as California, Massachusetts, Michigan and Rhode Island, to its present day use in all 50 states and Washington, D.C. It outlines additional steps that should be taken to realize optimal results in health care improvement. The report includes corresponding guides that offer practical information for health care payers to support effective adoption, and for consumers to better understand e-prescribing’s benefits and use. A third guide for prescribers is under development now, in collaboration with leading medical societies.
“Our report and the guides released today reflect a broad consensus among consumers, physicians, pharmacies, employers, insurers and others that e-prescribing can offer significant benefits in terms of patient safety, improved outcomes, and cost savings, especially if remaining challenges are addressed. The report contains several consensus recommendations to address those challenges effectively, and we look forward to working with all health care stakeholders to move those recommendations forward immediately,” said Janet Marchibroda, Chief Executive Officer, eHealth Initiative.
“E-prescribing works and its benefits for many stakeholders are proven,” said Kate Berry, executive director of The Center. “However, education, incentives, and implementation assistance are needed. We are hopeful that this report and the accompanying guides as well as the efforts of many industry leaders will serve to further accelerate the growth in e-prescribing and move it into mainstream practice.”
At the end of 2007, at least 35,000 prescribers were actively e-prescribing. By the end of 2008, estimates indicate there will be at least 85,000 active users of e-prescribing. While e-prescribing is growing rapidly, the adoption level at the end of 2007 represents only about six percent of physicians. As a result: only two percent (2%) of the prescriptions eligible for electronic routing in 2007 were transmitted electronically
Among the challenges listed in the report that limit widespread adoption of e-prescribing technology are the following:
- Financial burdens – Physician practices face varying financial burdens related to e-prescribing, including covering the implementation, training and maintenance costs.
- Workflow changes and change management – Although e-prescribing efficiencies and time savings are gained in the long run, introducing e-prescribing, and electronic health records (EHRs), can be difficult, time consuming, and requires adequate planning, training, and support, particularly in the beginning.
- Continued needs for greater connectivity. The infrastructure exists for connectivity among pharmacies, physician practices, payers and pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs), but some pharmacies, payers/PBMs and mail order pharmacies are not yet connected.
- Medication history – Although e-prescribing is an improvement over relying on paper medical records and patients’ memories, the information that is available may not always be comprehensive or accurate and therefore tools to adequately reconcile medication histories from multiple sources are needed.
The report also provides concrete recommendations to address these barriers and move e-prescribing into mainstream practice. Recommendations in the report include:
- Adoption and effective use of e-prescribing. All prescribers should adopt e-prescribing as it becomes a mainstream model of care, including small practices, small hospitals, and long term care facilities.
- Replicate and expand successful incentive programs. Align incentives developed by federal and state governments, payers, employers, health plans, and health systems.
- Address the DEA ban on e-prescribing controlled substances. The federal government should act soon to end the DEA ban on e-prescribing of controlled substances to eliminate the need for physicians to manage duplicative work processes.
- Create a public-private multi-stakeholder e-prescribing advisory body. The e-prescribing advisory body must be created to monitor, assess and make recommendations to accelerate the effective use of e-prescribing, and should be made up of diverse stakeholders across every sector of health care.
- All stakeholders should advance the e-prescribing infrastructure. The industry should encourage all pharmacies to accept electronic prescriptions and provide medication history information, all payers/PBMs to deliver formulary, eligibility, and medication history information through e-prescribing, and all vendors to deploy and support high-quality e-prescribing applications.
- Continue development of additional standards for e-prescribing. While fully connected e-prescribing is delivering real benefits based on the national standards in place today,additional standards development and adoption processes should be supported and accelerated and all stakeholders, including the federal government and the private sector, must be involved.
eHI and The Center also announced a collaboration with some of America’s leading medical societies, including the American Academy of Family Physicians (AAFP), the American College of Physicians, the American Medical Association (AMA), and the Medical Group Management Association (MGMA) to create a detailed practical guide for prescribers.
eHI and The Center encourage policy makers, providers, health systems, health plans, employers, and consumer organizations to use this report and the corresponding guides as resources as they help drive growth in e-prescribing to ensure that all potential benefits are achieved.
For more information about e-prescribing today, the policy landscape, and additional challenges and recommendations, view the full report at www.ehealthinitiative.org and www.theCIMM.org.
The Center for Health Transformation (CHT) also released a report today on e-prescribing, in collaboration with many of CHT’s members. The CHT report is available at www.healthtransformation.net.
The second report can be found here:
http://www.ehealthinitiative.org/assets/Documents/eHI_CIMM_ePrescribing_Report_6-10-08_FINAL.pdf
It seems the push to deploy e-prescribing is really on in the US with some bills already in Congress to make it mandatory over the next few years.
Both reports are useful grist to the mill!
Enjoy.
David.
2 comments:
It is sobering to ponder how much time has been spent, by so many people, writing so many reports, about eprescribing - and then comparing that against where eprescribing was five years ago and where it is today - and then asking - what has been achieved - are we doing anything differently today from the way we did it five years ago - here in Australia, over there in America - or are we all just doing what Winnie-the-Pooh did?
Do mean looking for the honeypot or going round and round the bush following his own footprints or both?
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