He gave up the paper pad four years ago and now only writes prescriptions for patients electronically.
While Dr. Richard Smith can’t specifically quantify the results, he knows without any doubt that e-prescribing has generated efficiencies in his medical practice.
“As you accept it in your practice, it’s a phenomenal tool,” said Smith, an obstetrician with the Henry Ford Medical Group and president of the Michigan State Medical Society. Smith, who’s been in practice for nearly 30 years, is among a growing number of physicians in Michigan and nationwide who now use e-prescribing, as health care rushes to catch up with other industries in the use of information technology. A June report shows Michigan is one of the leading states in e-prescribing rates, ranking third behind Rhode Island and Massachusetts. It moved up from fifth in 2007 and three spots from two years earlier.
In 2008, doctors in Michigan ordered 9.03 percent of all prescriptions electronically - 4.2 million new prescriptions and more than 603,000 refills - more than twice that of 2007 and more than quadruple the 2006 rate, according to Surescripts, a national provider of electronic access to health information that issues the annual Safe-Rx Awards to the top 10 states. The use of e-prescribing in other leading states has grown by similar rates since 2007. The rate in Massachusetts, for instance, grew to 20.5 percent in 2008 from 13.43 percent the year before and 8.80 percent in 2006.
Advocates of e-prescribing suspect Michigan’s 2009 rate is now in the mid-teens and say it will continue to rise rapidly. “We’re on a continuum right now,” Smith said. “We’ll see more and more.” At Grand Rapids-based health plan Priority Health, the e-prescribing rate by participating doctors was 14 percent as of May, up from just 3 percent at the end of 2008, pharmacy administrator Steve Marciniak said. Despite the strong growth in Michigan’s e-prescribing rate the past two years, Health Alliance Plan’s Denice Asbell says advocates need to maintain the push to go much further.
“Nine percent leaves a lot of room for growth and improvement,” said Asbell, project manager of purchasing initiatives at HAP, a unit of Henry Ford Health System. Read More Electronic Prescription
EHR adopters could face series of tighter standards
There may soon be one more incentive for hospitals and physician offices to buy and install electronic health-record systems on or before 2011. The added push could come from the prospect of increasingly higher thresholds of initial federal eligibility requirements for EHR subsidies under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, according to discussions at today’s meeting of the Health Information Technology Policy Committee.
A work group of that committee delivered its first draft of recommended definitions of “meaningful use” of EHRs, a standard that providers must meet to qualify for subsidy payments estimated at $34 billion to be handed out by Medicare and Medicaid. The work group recommended instituting a series of increasingly complex meaningful-use requirements between 2011, the first “payment year” of the subsidy program, and 2015, the final year payments will be made before financial penalties for not adopting begin.
During those discussions, Anthony Trenkle, director of the CMS’ office of e-Health Standards and Services, said the requirements will not be “tiered” based on when the provider adopts an EHR after 2011. Instead, whatever meaningful use standards are applicable for the year the provider applies for an EHR subsidy are the standards that provider must meet, regardless of whether it is the provider’s first year of EHR implementation. Read More EMR
A work group of that committee delivered its first draft of recommended definitions of “meaningful use” of EHRs, a standard that providers must meet to qualify for subsidy payments estimated at $34 billion to be handed out by Medicare and Medicaid. The work group recommended instituting a series of increasingly complex meaningful-use requirements between 2011, the first “payment year” of the subsidy program, and 2015, the final year payments will be made before financial penalties for not adopting begin.
During those discussions, Anthony Trenkle, director of the CMS’ office of e-Health Standards and Services, said the requirements will not be “tiered” based on when the provider adopts an EHR after 2011. Instead, whatever meaningful use standards are applicable for the year the provider applies for an EHR subsidy are the standards that provider must meet, regardless of whether it is the provider’s first year of EHR implementation. Read More EMR
Editorial: Prescription abuse
Florida’s medical examiners recently reported that prescription medicines caused more deaths in 2008 than illicit drugs. The medical examiners also reported sharp increases in deaths caused by prescription tranquilizers and painkillers, such as Oxycodone and hydrocodone.
The results of the year-end report weren’t surprising. Since the middle of last year, physicians, pharmacists and law enforcement officials have warned of a near-epidemic of deadly prescription medicine abuse. In 2005, the Medical Examiners Commission began reporting the drugs discovered in bodies subject to autopsies. The percentage of decedents with at least one drug in their bodies has increased each year; to 53 percent last year.
“The vast majority” (4,924) of the 8,556 drug-related deaths studied last year by the state’s medical examiners involved the presence of more than one drug, according to the 2008 report. The presence of at least one prescription drug caused the death of 2,184 people last year.
To put the scale of those numbers in perspective, consider: There were 2,983 deaths on Florida’s roads last year; 1,169 of those fatalities were alcohol-related. Prescription drugs caused more deaths than alcohol-related crashes in Florida.
Of particular concern: Death-related occurrences of both benzodiazepines and oxycodone were up by more than 20 percent in 2008 compared with 2007. The drugs that caused the most deaths in Florida: oxycodone (941), benzodiazepines (929), methadone (693), cocaine (648), alcohol (489), morphine (300), hydrocodone (270). Read More Electronic Prescription
The results of the year-end report weren’t surprising. Since the middle of last year, physicians, pharmacists and law enforcement officials have warned of a near-epidemic of deadly prescription medicine abuse. In 2005, the Medical Examiners Commission began reporting the drugs discovered in bodies subject to autopsies. The percentage of decedents with at least one drug in their bodies has increased each year; to 53 percent last year.
“The vast majority” (4,924) of the 8,556 drug-related deaths studied last year by the state’s medical examiners involved the presence of more than one drug, according to the 2008 report. The presence of at least one prescription drug caused the death of 2,184 people last year.
To put the scale of those numbers in perspective, consider: There were 2,983 deaths on Florida’s roads last year; 1,169 of those fatalities were alcohol-related. Prescription drugs caused more deaths than alcohol-related crashes in Florida.
Of particular concern: Death-related occurrences of both benzodiazepines and oxycodone were up by more than 20 percent in 2008 compared with 2007. The drugs that caused the most deaths in Florida: oxycodone (941), benzodiazepines (929), methadone (693), cocaine (648), alcohol (489), morphine (300), hydrocodone (270). Read More Electronic Prescription
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