New Hampshire Expanding E-Prescribing

New Hampshire is making progress in meeting Gov. John Lynch's goal of ensuring that all health care providers have the capability to prescribe medications electronically by October 2008, Lynch and members of the Citizens Health Initiative said Wednesday.

"Moving to electronic prescriptions is an important step forward in improving health care efficiency, controlling costs, reducing medical errors and increasing patient safety," Lynch said. "New Hampshire is making real progress in ensuring all of our health care providers have the capability of prescribing medications electronically."

Since Lynch set that goal last year, New Hampshire has put in place the technological infrastructure to allow e-prescribing. Two companies -- RxHub and SureScripts -- have established an electronic hub that provides prescribers and pharmacists with access to information about prescription formularies, provides access to the medication history of patients whose providers write electronic prescriptions, and allows for electronic transactions between health care providers and pharmacies.

Lynch also announced three new programs aimed at continuing to increase the number of New Hampshire health care providers with e-prescribing capabilities:

• Anthem Blue Cross & Blue Shield and the Citizens Health Initiative have developed a new program that offers physicians access to free software, a free mobile pocket PC and a discounted wireless telecommunications plan. This program is significant because it will help physicians who are not part of larger practices or affiliated with hospitals gain access to affordable ePrescribing tools.
• The Local Government Center, which provides pharmacy benefit coverage for more than 100,000 New Hampshire state and municipal employees, will also provide free e-Prescribing software and handheld devices to 40 of their highest prescribers beginning in January.
• Concord Hospital will serve as one of three national test sites for an electronic medical record system that enables its doctors to write and send prescriptions electronically. In addition to searching and alerting prescribers to potentially harmful drug interactions, this system will also alert providers when a patient has picked up the drug or ordered refills.

Each year, more than 3 billion prescriptions are written nationally -- with four out of five patients taking more than one prescription and one in three taking more than five prescriptions. There are more than 10,000 prescription medications on the market and with more than 300,000 over-the-counter medications, there are millions of possible drug and dosage combinations. According to the New England Journal of Medicine, in an outpatient setting, 25 percent of all patients experienced a medical prescription error, 13 percent of which were very serious.

"No doctor can possibly know the potential side effects with all of these combinations, and patients do not always tell all their doctors all the medications they take," Lynch said. "With e-prescribing, physicians and their office staffs will benefit from access to online information about potential hazardous drug-to-drug interactions and drug allergy reactions, making it easier to prescribe the right drug, with the proper dosage, the first time."