Electronic Prescribing Gathers Steam

Local companies are part of the vanguard trying to take the pens from doctors' hands

WITH ALL THE talk of the May 15 sign-up deadline for Medicare Part D there was no mention of another cut-off date written into the law that created the new prescription drug plan for seniors. By April 1,2007, a number of organizations-including MedPlus, a subsidiary of Lyndhurst-based Quest Diagnostics, and Horizon Blue Cross Shield of New Jersey-are expected to report the results of four federally funded trial electronic-prescribing programs.

MedPlus, a Mason, Ohio-based firm that provides electronic systems for keeping patient records, is taking part in one. Horizon, based in Newark, is co-leading another. The U.S. Department of Health and Human Services funded the four trials to the tune of almost $6 million.

E-prescribing, which allows doctors to write and transmit prescriptions to a patient's pharmacy from an office computer or handheld electronic device, is slowly replacing the traditional method of illegible scrawls on slips of paper, phone calls and faxes. Congress made the transition a national priority three years ago by inserting suggested e-prescribing standards into the 2003 Medicare Modernization Act.

The pilot programs are intended to test those standards, measuring among other things, if e-prescribing decreases errors by eliminating unreadable paper records.

The program including MedPlus launched last month in five states including New Jersey. The study's participants include various e-prescribing-service providers and Brown University.

The part of the study involving MedPlus is being conducted in New Jersey and Florida, using doctors who participate with Partners In Care, a physican organization, and Aetna, the Hartford, Conn.-based health insurer.

MedPlus will supply participating doctors with its Care360 Physician Portal that enables ordering of diagnostic tests and prescription filing. Care360 also allows doctors to create and share online patient records.

Working with Horizon are RAND Corp., the California think tank, and e-prescribing vendors AllScripts, Caremark iScribe and InstantDx. The group has dubbed itself the New Jersey �-Prescribing Action Coalition.

"As a participant in the New Jersey EPrescribing Action Coalition, we hope to forge stronger relationships with doctors and pharmacists to understand how this new technology can improve patient safety," says Richard Popiel, vice president of Horizon. Horizon has been involved with e-prescribing since 2004 when it distributed handheld personal digital assistants to some doctors in its network, allowing them to order medicines online. In the current trial, some 1,000 physicians who treat Horizon members are able to transmit prescriptions to local pharmacies through the Internet.

The pilot, which launched in January, involves sending medication orders to the mailorder pharmacy of Caremark Rx, a drug-benefits services company based in Nashville, Term., and to Walgreens pharmacies in New Jersey.

Medco Health Solutions, the Franklin Lakes pharmacy benefits manager, is a part owner of RxHub, one of the companies whose network is carrying the e-prescriptons. "We have long been a proponent of e-prescribing, and have implemented programs and invested in joint ventures to help make it the standard of care," says spokeswoman Heather Stewart.

Stewart says one of the biggest barriers to making e-prescribing mainstream has been physicians' unwillingness to adopt the technology. To help soften stubborn doctors, Medco joined the Southeast Michigan E-Prescribing Initiative (SMEI), which began last year. The SMEI is a collaboration including General Motors, Ford Motor, DaimlerChrysler, the United Auto Workers union and selected doctors that accept Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan insurance.

"The goal is to encourage physicians to implement and use the e-prescribing technology. The pilot is different than others in that it doesn't just give the technology to the doctors," says Stewart. "It actually requires the doctors to purchase the technology. The thinking here is that if doctor's have skin in the game, they will use the technology." She declines to disclose the cost.

The Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services awarded a $200,000 grant to Medco for the study.

[Sidebar]

"The goal is to encourage physicians to implement and use the e-prescribing technology."

HEATHER STEWART

Spokeswoman, Medco Health Solutions

[Author Affiliation]

E-mail to tgaudio@njbiz.com