Gov. John Lynch: "Electronic prescribing will help ensure patients get the best possible medication to meet their needs. That will reduce medical errors, save lives, and reduce health care costs."

In a ground-breaking effort to improve patient safety, control costs, and reduce medication errors, Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield in New Hampshire and the New Hampshire Citizens Health Initiative, created by Gov. John Lynch, have launched a state-wide electronic prescribing, or ePrescribing, program for every physician office in the Granite State.

ePrescribing enables a licensed practitioner to generate a prescription electronically and then transmit it to a pharmacy. Through this new program, Anthem is offering physicians access to free ePrescribing software, a free mobile pocket PC, and a discounted wireless telecommunication plan that will enable them to access real-time patient eligibility, formulary, and medication history information from any internet enabled PC, or anywhere a cell phone signal is available. Physicians with these tools can write and renew prescriptions anytime, anywhere, for all of their patients, not just Anthem members.

"Physicians will now have ample information at their fingertips to help them ensure the safety of their patients, to work more efficiently, and to save their patients money on prescriptions," said Lisa M. Guertin, president, Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield in New Hampshire.

Last fall, Gov. Lynch announced his goal to make New Hampshire the first state in the nation where all prescribing health care providers are able to prescribe medication electronically.

"Electronic prescribing will help ensure patients get the best possible medication to meet their needs. That will reduce medical errors, save lives, and reduce health care costs," he said. "That is why, working through the Citizens Health Initiative, I've made electronic prescribing a priority. This effort will help us meet our goals of making New Hampshire the first state in the nation where all health care providers are able to prescribe medication electronically."

More than three billion prescriptions are written annually in the United States, with medication errors resulting in $77 billion in costs and 7,000 deaths per year (Institute of Medicine, 2006). Currently, fewer than 22 percent of physicians nationwide use the basic capabilities of electronic prescribing, according to the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS). CMS estimates that the use of such technology could eliminate as many as two million harmful drug events each year. Electronic prescribing pilots have demonstrated that up to 2 percent of all prescriptions transmitted this way get changed before being administered to the patient because ePrescribing has alerted the physician to potential safety problems.

The Anthem ePrescribing program, supported by Sprint and the National ePrescribing Patient Safety Initiative (NEPSI), will include access to a patient's eligibility, formularies, adverse drug event alerts, and medication history including medications prescribed by physicians outside of the practice.

"We applaud Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield in New Hampshire for its leadership in taking this very positive step to enhance the safety of the medication prescribing process for all of New Hampshire's patients," said Glen Tullman, co-chair of NEPSI and chief executive officer of Allscripts, which provides NEPSI's web-based ePrescribing software. "Extending the program beyond their own covered members demonstrates the kind of leadership we need to see more of in health care today."

Most electronic medical record (EMR) systems have ePrescribing capability, however to date that technology has not been widely used and often has not supported the ePrescribing process. In addition to accessing ePrescribing via EMR systems, prescribers can use smart phone/personal digital assistant (PDA) devices or stand-alone, web-based applications.

"Not only is this program expected to help reduce medical errors and improve patient safety by providing drug-specific information, it will also help eliminate confusion among drug names and improve communication between physicians and pharmacists,"