According to CMS, “recognition” means the agency approves the use of the updated standard for e-prescribing; however, it is not yet formally adopted as the new standard.

New features in the version 10.6 standard will allow users to provide:

• Prescriber order numbers;
• Drug NDC source data;
• Pharmacy prescription fill numbers; and
• Date of prescription sale.

According to CMS, the new functions will “facilitate better record matching, the identification and elimination of duplicate records, and the provision of richer information to the prescriber between willing trading partners.”

CMS plans to publish the final version of the interim final rule on July 1 (Goedert, Health Data Management, 6/29).

Source: http://www.ihealthbeat.org/articles/2010/6/30/cms-recognizes-updated-eprescribing-standard-for-medicare-part-d.aspx

It’s a small study group, but the results are eye-opening nonetheless: Primary-care practices cut their prescription error rates from 42.5 percent to 6.6 percent in a one-year period by adopting e-prescribing technology.

That’s the finding of researchers at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City, as reported in the Journal of General Internal Medicine, who studied the prescribing accuracy of 12 primary-care practices in New York state. Six of the practices wrote prescriptions electronically, resulting in the major reduction in errors, while the half-dozen practices in the control group that stuck with paper prescription pads had a small uptick in their error rate, from 37 percent to 38 percent.

Not surprisingly, e-prescribing had an immediate impact on legibility, as the researchers found at the beginning of the study period that 88 percent of handwritten prescriptions at the practices that adopted the technology had some question about the prescriber’s intentions. What e-prescribing did not do, however, is reduce the rate of potentially adverse drug events. But near misses actually increased at practices that did not switch to e-prescribing.

Above article publish on http://www.fierceemr.com/story/study-e-prescribing-greatly-improves-accuracy-less-so-safety/2010-03-18

Payers and health plans have pushed for new incentives for electronic prescription in 2009. For example, in January, Medicare paid doctors a bonus if they exchanged their prescription pads over to e-prescribing. Various private health plans have also offered extra payments along with free equipment.

What the stats say: According to Web sources, the number of physicians prescribing medicines electronically has more than doubled in the past year to about 70,000 (about 12 percent of all office-based doctors). The increase is owing to the incentives introduced at the start of the year. Try not to fall in the 88 percent bracket still holding out in 2010 while throwing out two percent of your Medicare income and possibly other bonuses from private payers.

So have you applied electronic prescription processes? If not you could be missing out on a two percent Medicare bonus. Here’s what you can do to ensure an easy transition.

Before you get going, it is essential that you ask yourself if you want to practice e-prescribing using a stand-alone system or one that is part of an electronic health records (EHR).

Pros and cons:

• Standalone systems are the least expensive and the fastest to implement. But EHRs have additional features that aid in managing a medical practice over the long run.

• Standalones will enable the practice to be up in time for 2010 to optimize the bonus.

• Standalone systems may have the capability to interface with a PM or EHR system.

• The practice can then convert from a standalone system to an integrated system when an EHR is implemented.

But the good news is you do not have to have an EMR (electronic medical record) system to e-prescribe. You can find standalone e-prescription systems such as online options that come much cheaper than a full-blown EMR.

Above article publish on http://www.goarticles.com/cgi-bin/showa.cgi?C=2407907

Tennessee is recognized as one of the top five most improved states in routing prescriptions electronically.

Surescripts, a health information network that operates the country’s largest electronic prescribing network, announced that Tennessee ranked second behind Vermont and just ahead of Kansas, Illinois and Missouri on the top five list. Recognized as the country’s leading states in electronic prescribing were Massachusetts, Rhode Island, Michigan, Nevada and Delaware.

The state was recognized during an event held by Surescripts at Washington’s National Press Club.

Tennessee Gov. Phil Bredesen co-hosted the fourth annual Safe-Rx Awards event as part of the State Alliance for e-Health. Bredesen co-chairs the alliance and co-hosted the event with Vermont Gov. Jim Douglas.

Surescripts created the Safe-Rx Awards to raise awareness of e- prescribing as a way to improve patient safety by providing a secure, accurate and informed prescribing process.

The State Alliance was created by the National Governors Association Center for Best Practices in January 2007 to improve the nation’s health care system by forming a collaborative body that lets states increase the efficiency and effectiveness of the health information technology initiatives they develop.

“The State Alliance recognized early on that encouraging states to make e-prescribing a top priority would have an immense value in our electronic health efforts,” Bredesen said. “Paperless prescribing is making its way into the health care mainstream in Tennessee and across the nation. It’s our hope to see e-prescribing become a natural part of every health care provider’s workflow because of its practical benefits to patients in providing better care.”

In January 2010, Surescripts will release a new state ranking. Using data from 2009, the rankings will measure use of three steps in electronic prescribing: prescription benefit, prescription history, and prescription routing.

In Washington for the State Alliance event, Bredesen was making one of his first public appearances since returning from a trade mission to Europe.

Bredesen said he spent some time calling on economic development prospects for Tennessee.

The trip did not yield any concrete results, “nor did I expect that,” he said.

“Economic development is something you just have to keep plugging away at,” Bredesen said. “You make the trips to see people. Sometimes, you hit a home run. Sometimes, you strike out. But on the whole, I’m very satisfied with the trip.”

Bredesen said he did come back with an idea for the 1,700-acre megasite industrial park in Haywood County in West Tennessee. The state budget approved last week includes $40.3 million to acquire land for the site.

Bredesen declined to provide any other details about his idea for the park, but said it’s something the state should start thinking about.

“There’s enough money there and the site makes sense,” he said. “I doubt we can bring it to closure on my watch, but if you can hand something ready to go to the next governor, so much the better.”

Bredesen’s trade mission included stops in Switzerland, Germany and Poland.

In Munich, the governor paid a courtesy call to the headquarters of Wacker Chemie AG, which is building a $1 billion plant near Cleveland that will make polysilicon, a material used to make photovoltaic cells.

In Birr, Switzerland, Bredesen toured the Alstom Turbine and Generator rotor manufacturing operation and met with a group of Tennesseans employed by Alstom in Chattanooga.

The trade mission concluded with a trip to Warsaw, where the governor met with Victor Ashe, a former Knoxville mayor who is the U.S. ambassador to Poland, and business leaders from the Polish American Chamber of Commerce.

Bredesen said Poland’s rapidly developing economy offers a lot of trade opportunities for Tennessee companies to sell goods there. “I want to keep pursuing that,” he said.

Above article published on

http://www.knoxnews.com/news/2009/jun/23/tennessee-makes-strides-in-electronic-prescribing/

Florida is among 11 states without electronic means to track the dispensing of controlled substances, but as of May, a new law was passed by the Florida General Assembly and has Kentucky lawmakers hoping the pill pipeline will cease.

During a sentencing hearing Wednesday in U.S. District Court in Ashland, Judge David L. Bunning told convicted drug dealers Roger Martin Jr., and Jason Clay Carter that he is hopeful the new law will curb Kentuckians appetite for prescription drugs.

“I have been advised the state of Florida is going to adopt rules that I hope will curtail the problem of drugs being piped from Florida to Kentucky,” Judge Bunning said. “This has become an epidemic, and we must get a handle on it before more lives are destroyed.”

The drug epidemic has mounted by the day as people from Rowan, Carter and Elliott counties travel in planes, buses and vans to Florida’s pill mill to visit doctors prescribing hundreds of pain pills for cash.

And although the prescriptions are obtained legally, traffickers carry the drugs back to the Bluegrass and sell them on the streets, causing numerous drug-related court cases, convictions – and even deaths blamed on overdoses.

The trips are made in attempts to escape KASPER (Kentucky All Schedule Prescription Electronic Reporting system), which tracks those prescribing, dispensing and receiving drugs.

The legislation now goes to Florida Gov. Charlie Crist for his signature. According to the Associated Press, Crist hasn’t taken a public position on the bill, yet.

Providing he signs the bill, Kentucky officials will supply Florida with the software used for KASPER, and then the two states can share information about prescriptions.

Since Florida’s legislation does not include money to operate the program, Florida officials are expected to seek private funding as well as apply for money through Rep. Hal Rogers’ prescription drug monitoring program and NASPER, a program supported by Rep. Ed Whitfield.

Above article published on

http://www.themoreheadnews.com/local/local_story_191124129.html?keyword=topstory

By Nancy Ferris

The stimulus law’s incentives for providers to adopt health information technology will double the rate of e-prescribing and result in a $22 billion reduction in drug and medical costs in the next decade, according to a study commissioned by the Pharmaceutical Care Management Association.

If the study’s authors at consulting firm Visante are correct, the e-prescribing savings alone will more than pay for the $19 billion in adoption incentives and other health IT promotion activities required under the stimulus law.

By 2014, more than three-quarters of prescribers will be using e-prescribing, the researchers said. That is double the number anticipated after passage of the Medicare Improvements for Patients and Providers Act of 2008, which includes incentives to encourage Medicare providers to adopt e-prescribing. Today, fewer than 15 percent of prescribers use e-prescribing, according to Visante’s report.

The report said e-prescribing saves money by:

• Informing doctors at the point of prescribing about the cost and clinical characteristics of medication options and letting doctors choose the best and most affordable drugs, including more generic drugs.
• Giving doctors the patient’s medication history so that harmful drug interactions and duplicate prescriptions can be avoided.
• Notifying doctors of pharmacy options, including mail-order and retail drug stores, to help them hold down patients’ out-of-pocket costs.
• Transmitting the prescription to the pharmacy electronically, thereby reducing waiting times and errors associated with illegible handwriting.

Besides cutting the federal government’s costs by $22 billion, the report states that health care payers will save a total of $56.2 billion under the stimulus law, titled the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.

The increase in health IT adoption will also prevent 3.5 million adverse drug reactions and 585,000 hospitalizations stemming from those reactions, the report states.

Although the law’s incentives will not totally offset providers’ outlays for acquiring electronic health records, the report predicts that “pay-for-performance measures implemented by the private sector will likely provide further financial inducement for providers to adopt the technology.”

The Pharmaceutical Care Management Association, the study’s sponsor, represents pharmacy benefits managers. It has been a proponent of e-prescribing for several years.

About the Author

Nancy Ferris is senior editor of Government Health IT.

Above article published on

http://govhealthit.com/articles/2009/03/16/eprescribing-saving.aspx