Friday, January 26, 2007

Quovadx Participates in Developing Accenture Nationwide Health Information Network Prototype

Quovadx Participates in Developing Accenture Nationwide Health Information Network Prototype
Accenture-Led Consortium Shows Benefits of Nationwide Network Are within Reach of U.S. Citizens and Healthcare Community
GREENWOOD VILLAGE, Colo.--(BUSINESS WIRE)--Jan. 25, 2007--Quovadx, Inc. (Nasdaq: QVDX), a global software and vertical solution company, today announced its Integration Solution division's (ISD) role in the Accenture-led team that developed a fully integrated health information system prototype.
The Accenture solution, which works with legacy clinical systems, is a significant step toward building an interoperable, standards-based network. Quovadx ISD, as part of the Accenture-led team, provided its clinical interoperability solution, leveraging flagship Cloverleaf(R) Integration Suite technology to support secure interoperability, and its Secure Object Client to facilitate physician office connectivity for the networked community. Quovadx also provided implementation services for each of these technologies.
"We are extremely proud to be working alongside Accenture and the other consortium members to create an integrated health information system prototype as part of the Nationwide Health Information Network (NHIN) program," said Harvey A. Wagner, chief executive officer, Quovadx. "At Quovadx, we feel strongly that clinical data sharing can help improve patient safety and the quality of care while reducing healthcare costs, and we are excited to be part of Office of the National Coordinator for Health Information Technology (ONCHIT) initiative to facilitate interoperability between healthcare organizations and advance this cause."
The Accenture prototype shows that patient data can be extracted from disparate information systems and converted to a common language that enables sharing between physician offices, medical laboratories, hospitals and other clinical settings - offering a "single view" of a patient's medical information. This approach, which allows the industry to build on existing investments in legacy provider systems, allows rapid implementation of a secure infrastructure to facilitate data sharing.
In November 2005, the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services awarded a contract to Accenture to lead the development of a prototype network for secure information sharing among healthcare communities in West Virginia, eastern Kentucky, northeastern Tennessee and southwestern Virginia. This region has a wide variety of clinical systems among different provider organizations, much like the majority of the United States.
About Accenture
Accenture is a global management consulting, technology services and outsourcing company. Committed to delivering innovation, Accenture collaborates with its clients to help them become high-performance businesses and governments. With deep industry and business process expertise, broad global resources and a proven track record, Accenture can mobilize the right people, skills, and technologies to help clients improve their performance. With approximately 146,000 people in 49 countries, the company generated net revenues of US$16.65 billion for the fiscal year ended Aug. 31, 2006. Its home page is www.accenture.com.
About Quovadx, Inc.
Quovadx (Nasdaq: QVDX) offers software and services for system development, extension, integration and analysis to enterprise customers worldwide. Quovadx has three divisions, including the Integration Solutions division (ISD), which offers private and public healthcare organizations software infrastructure to facilitate system interoperability and leverage existing technology, the CareScience division, which provides care management and analytical solutions to hospitals and health systems and pioneered regional healthcare information organization (RHIO) technology, and the Rogue Wave Software division, which provides software and services for enterprise-class application development and high-performance SOA. Quovadx serves companies in the healthcare, financial services, telecommunication and public sectors. For more information, please visit http://www.quovadx.com.
QUOVADX is a trademark of Quovadx, Inc. and Cloverleaf is a registered trademark of Quovadx, Inc. in the United States and other countries. All other company and product names mentioned may be trademarks of the companies with which they are associated.
CONTACT: Quovadx, Inc.Andrea Lashnits, 720-554-1246andrea.lashnits@quovadx.comorAbby Cohen, 212-850-5710abby.cohen@fd.comSOURCE: Quovadx, Inc.

Thursday, January 25, 2007

Progress report on federal healthcare IT goals

HHS releases progress report on federal healthcare IT goals

Healthcare IT News

By Bernie Monegain, Editor
01/24/07
WASHINGTON – Since 2004, the United States has made strides toward automating its healthcare system, according to a report released Wednesday by the Department of Health and Human Services. The report details HHS accomplishments toward the goal of healthcare automation that President Bush first called for in his 2004 State of the Union Address, reiterated in his 2005 speech and again in the State of the Union Address Tuesday night.
“In 2006, HHS achieved several major milestones to meet the president’s call for most Americans to have access to electronic health records by 2014,” HHS Secretary Michael Leavitt stated in the report. “These significant accomplishments will provide tangible value to healthcare consumers – helping to reduce costs and medical errors with better information technology.”The report casts 2004 as “laying the foundation,” and 2005 as initial steps and progress.” HHS lists “major accomplishments” in 2006 and spells out some goals for 2007. Among the accomplishments: • Recommendations delivered by the American Health Information Community having to do with consumer empowerment, chronic care, electronic health records and bio-surveillance. • Standards harmonization that form the basis of interoperability• President Bush’s Executive Order on value-driven care• EHR certification developed by the Certification Commission for Healthcare Information Technology• Changes to regulations to allow hospitals or other healthcare organizations to donate healthcare IT to physicians• Healthcare IT adoption measurement – working with George Washington University, HHS conducted a physician survey to establish a baseline for measuring healthcare IT adoption. “These accomplishments will encourage broad, standards-based adoption of health IT that will improve the health and healthcare of all Americans,” according to the HHS report. “Already, the markets are responding to federal leadership.”Looking forward, the report cites the upcoming demonstrations of four prototype architectures for development of a nationwide health information network and work by the American Health Information Community workgroups on matters of privacy and security, quality and personalized healthcare.

Wednesday, January 24, 2007

Companies poised to take part in EMR shift

Posted on Sun, Jan. 21, 2007

Poised to assist the medical sector in connecting the data

By Jane M. Von BergenInquirer Staff Writer
Imagine cradle-to-grave personalized health information, computerized and centralized.
Scary? Or part of the salvation of America's expensive and unwieldy health system? If it saves lives and improves efficiency, as proponents say, it will mean billions of dollars of business for hardware, software and consulting companies.
No wonder companies are positioning themselves to profit from electronic medical records.
Tens of billions of dollars worth of technology - depending on who's estimating and how - would be needed to bridge existing islands of medical information now stored in files in doctors' offices, pharmacies, insurance companies, hospitals, laboratories and workplaces.
Doctors' offices, now notoriously paper-dependent, would need to go digital. So would hospitals, and they would all need help.
Gone would be those under-the-bed cartons of old X-rays, children's immunization records, and medical bills. The pharmacist could log on to see all a patient's prescriptions, avoiding dispensing pills in harmful combinations.
An electronic medical record, linked to hospitals, doctors and pharmacies, would follow someone from her first day to her last. Under some scenarios, the individual would control the record; in others, control would remain with health-care providers.
Whether payers, such as insurance companies, or academics doing broad-based research would be able to link in remains an open question. So does the amount of access that employers would have.
However it is set up, it will cost billions to implement.
BBC Research & Consulting, a Denver market-research firm, predicts that the market for health-information technology will reach $34.7 billion in sales by 2011 - and that does not include computer systems used by insurers, employers or even individuals to keep track of their care.
"It bodes very well for a company like mine, being in the right place in the right time with the right product," said Dennis Gallagher, a salesman for Vitalize Consulting Solutions Inc. in Kennett Square, a 115-employee firm that helps hospitals and doctors convert from paper to electronic systems.
And it also bodes well for Gallagher's former employer, Siemens Medical Solutions USA - a multibillion-dollar unit of the German company with its U.S. headquarters in Malvern. Siemens is one of the nation's largest providers of clinical software coordinating patient care in hospitals and doctor practices.
Earlier this month, Gallagher and 130 other members of the Delaware Valley Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society went to the Siemens corporate campus for its regular monthly meeting.
The speaker?
Former GOP House Speaker Newt Gingrich, whose Center for Health Transformation think tank in Washington has been a major advocate of using information technology to enable patients to receive better care at lower cost. And Siemens, which helps fund Gingrich's center, is trying to boost its presence in the electronic-medical-record market.
"Our commitment is to educate" doctors and hospitals, said Connie D'Argenio, vice president of health services for Siemens, who introduced Gingrich at the event earlier this month. If doctors and hospitals want to spend money on technology, she said, "then we'll be well-positioned to be their partners."
About half of Siemens Medical's $10.3 billion in annual sales derives from the United States, and a sizable portion of that comes from information-technology systems that Siemens sells to coordinate and computerize clinical care in hospitals and doctors' offices.
For example, Siemens showed Gingrich its bar-code technology that requires a nurse, before dispensing medicine, to scan bar codes on her identification badge, on the medicine package, and on the patient's hospital bracelet. That raises the patient's chart on a computer wheeled into the room and confirms that the right patient is receiving the right dose of the right medicine at the right time, while also pointing out any potential counterindications and generating a care record for the future.
Gingrich said the government should finance an electronic medical network as part of the nation's defense system against, for example, a bioterrorism attack, just as Dwight Eisenhower initially funded the interstate highway as a national defense network during the Cold War.
"It is virtually inevitable that we will move to an electronic health record for every person, and that health record will start with prenatal care and end with analytics after you passed away," Gingrich said in his speech, which was Webcast to 803 Siemens customers and employees around the nation.
Although there has been talk of electronic medical records for at least a decade, several factors have been moving it to the forefront.
The rising cost of health care and its effect on the nation's competitiveness, the health needs of aging baby-boomers, leadership from the Bush administration nationally and the Rendell administration in Pennsylvania, and increased technological proficiency are all driving support for such records.
On Wednesday, Rendell included the idea of electronic health records in his sweeping plan to change how health care has been provided and funded in Pennsylvania.
Around the nation, experiments and projects are cropping up - financed by a variety of sources.
"Philadelphia is one of the most innovative leaders in this respect," said Elliot Menschik, founder of Hx Technologies in Center City.
In the second quarter, Hx Technologies' Philadelphia Health Information Exchange will begin to trade patient data - with patients' approval - among several competing health organizations, including the University of Pennsylvania Health System and Thomas Jefferson University Hospital.
Menschik said the launch would build on results from a 20-month experiment completed last year - an experiment that he said showed how electronic health records could improve patient care and cut costs.
His company analyzed medical imaging done in the two health systems, selecting imaging because CT scans, X-rays and MRIs are already digitized and would be easy to share.
The experiment showed that 20,000 patients sought care in both systems. These patients generated 125,000 imaging examinations. Of those, 10,000 would have been useful to doctors at the other hospital.
For example, a doctor at one hospital might have liked to compare older X-rays taken at the other hospital to improve diagnosis. Of the 10,000, 1,520 were straight duplicates that cost $218,000 - an expense that could have been avoided.
"Our company believes the strongest potential is working with the health plans," Menschik said. So far, funding has come from the National Institutes of Health and the hospital systems. He said he has been talking to local insurers.
Some regions, including Boston and California, have established nonprofit organizations to set up similar exchanges, called Regional Health Information Organizations. Next week in Washington, leaders will be sharing business prototypes at a conference sponsored by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services.
Last month, five major corporations - among them Intel Corp., Wal-Mart Stores Inc. and Pitney Bowes Inc. - announced they would finance the development of Dossia, a Web-based personal health record available to their 2.5 million employees, dependents and retirees.
Controlled by employees, Dossia would cull information from their doctors, hospitals and pharmacies to create a comprehensive health history that would be portable and private.
"As an employer, we've got 50,000 people," said Colin Evans, director of policy and standards at California-based Intel.
Evans said the company's motivation in financing Dossia was more about concerns it has as one of the nation's largest employers, rather than for potential new business it might garner through electronic medical records.
"We spend half a billion dollars on health care every year," he said. "One could argue that it is out of control. The amount we spend on health care is pricing jobs out of the U.S. to other places."
From Paper to Computer
Here's a glossary of some of the most frequently used terms for digital medical information:
Personal Health Record (PHR): Controlled by individuals, these records could include prescriptions, laboratory results, physicians' reports, lab images. Some think these records should also link to sources of relevant medical information, including, for example, help in controlling diabetes or asthma.
Electronic Medical Record (EMR): Controlled by doctors or hospitals, these records keep track of the care given to patients in a clinical setting. These can also assist with billing.
Computerized Physician Order Entry (CPOE): These systems keep track of physicians' orders, partly to ensure that bad handwriting doesn't contribute to medical errors.
Regional Health Information Organization (RHIO): Typically nonprofits, these organizations orchestrate the electronic exchange of information among area hospitals and other providers, with the consent of the patients. They choose standards and protocols.
Health Information Exchange (HIE): The technology infrastructure that a RHIO would use.
Workplace reporter Jane M. Von Bergen and Elliot Menschik, founder of Hx Technologies, chat online at noon tomorrow about how sharing digital patient information could improve care and cut costs.
Read more at http://go.philly.com/hxfiles.
E-mail your questions to: businessnews@phillynews.com.

Tuesday, January 23, 2007

WellPoint Launches E-Prescription Pilot

January 23, 2007


Indianapolis-based WellPoint on Monday announced the launch of an electronic-prescription pilot program for 100 physicians in its subsidiary, Anthem Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Ohio, the Indianapolis Star reports.

The program will allow participating physicians to submit patient prescriptions electronically to pharmacies and provide information about the prescriptions, such as possible drug interactions, drugs with similar names and cheaper generic options.

Physicians will be reimbursed $750 for computer hardware and $40 per month for the cost of the e-prescribing service. WellPoint said that other e-prescribing programs have resulted in changes to 2% of prescriptions because of alerts about safety concerns.

General Motors, an Anthem customer in the Ohio area, also is providing funding for the program. WellPoint has not yet decided if the program will be expanded to its other markets (Lee, Indianapolis Star, 1/23).

Monday, January 22, 2007

Free E-prescribing to Every Physician in America

Washington, DC – Jan. 16, 2007 – A coalition of the nation’s most prominent technology
companies and leading healthcare organizations announced today a national initiative to provide
free electronic prescribing for every physician in America. The National ePrescribing Patient
Safety InitiativeSM (NEPSISM) is the first nationwide effort to improve patient safety by offering a
solution to the medication errors that harm millions of people each year.
Preventable medication errors injure at least 1.5 million Americans and claim more than 7,000
lives each year, according to a July 2006 study by the Institute of Medicine (IOM) of the National
Academy of Sciences. In an effort to reduce these errors, the IOM has called on all of the
nation’s physicians to adopt electronic prescribing by 2010.
“While medication errors and adverse drug events can be common and serious, electronic
prescribing is clearly a tool that can dramatically reduce errors and improve patient safety,” said
Nancy W. Dickey, currently President of the Health Science Center and Vice Chancellor for
Health Affairs at the Texas A&M University System and formerly President of the American
Medical Association. “Yet despite the many benefits of electronic prescribing, physician adoption
is still modest. The situation calls for a solution that will overcome the barriers many physicians
face in adopting this life-saving technology.”
The challenge, according to the eHealth Initiative, is that fewer than 1 in 5 of the nation’s
practicing physicians currently process prescriptions electronically. Studies indicate that most
physicians have been reluctant to adopt electronic prescribing largely because of the cost of the
systems, and a perception that the technology requires too much time to learn and install.
NEPSI will help address those barriers by providing physicians simple, safe and secure electronic
prescribing at no cost. NEPSI is led by Allscripts (Nasdaq: MDRX), the leading provider of clinical
software, information and connectivity solutions that physicians use to improve healthcare, and by
national sponsor Dell Computers, Inc. (Nasdaq: DELL), the world’s leading computer company.
Other technology companies sponsoring NEPSI are Cisco Systems Corp., Fujitsu Computers of
America, Inc., Google, Inc. – the coalition’s Search Sponsor – Microsoft, Corp., Sprint Nextel
Corp., SureScripts, Inc., and Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc.
“Medication errors represent a significant challenge for our nation and we know we can and we
must do better by taking action – right now,” said Glen Tullman, Chief Executive Officer of
Allscripts. “The National e-Prescribing Patient Safety Initiative brings together a diverse group of
technology companies, payers and physicians who share a commitment to one remarkable idea –
that providing free electronic prescribing for every physician will ultimately reduce errors and
improve care. This initiative delivers a simple yet comprehensive solution, and represents an onramp
to a complete Electronic Health Record.”
Kevin Rollins, President and Chief Executive Officer of Dell, NEPSI’s national sponsor,
commented, “We are proud to add sponsorship of the NEPSI Coalition to the growing list of
healthcare-related initiatives that Dell is helping to lead. Information technology holds great
promise as a means to help upgrade our nation’s healthcare system, and we look forward to
working with partners such as Allscripts to help demonstrate its potential to improve the quality,
efficiency and productivity of healthcare in the America.”
In addition to Dell, a number of the largest technology companies in the world are sponsoring
NEPSI including Microsoft and Intel.
"Microsoft is proud to support the NEPSI initiative, which we believe is a major step forward in the
effort to arm our nation’s physicians with the technology they need to eliminate paper from the
prescription process and deliver higher quality, safer patient care,” said Steve Shihadeh, General
Manager of Sales, Marketing and Partners for Microsoft’s Health Solutions Group. “We believe
that consumers will be the biggest beneficiaries of this technology adoption by physicians,
enabling real-time access to the most relevant patient information".
Craig Barrett, Intel Chairman, who recently announced an initiative with major employers to
provide a personal health record system for their employees, commented, “Paper prescriptions
are a key cause of cost, errors and inefficiency in U.S. health care. Which other industry could
tell their customers it was OK to have a 15 percent error rate; imagine the airlines landing at the
wrong destination 15 percent of the time. Electronic prescribing should be the rule not the
exception. We look forward to working together with Allscripts and this initiative to lower health
care costs and drive improvements, ultimately providing more timely and accurate information to
our employees through direct feeds to the Dossia lifelong health record.”
A key element of the NEPSI initiative is participation by two of the nation’s largest health benefits
companies, Aetna and WellPoint, as well as influential regional payers such as Horizon Blue
Cross Blue Shield of New Jersey. The coalition’s health benefits sponsors will provide a range of
incentives to physicians in their networks to encourage adoption and use of electronic prescribing
technology. Their view is that electronic prescribing adds quality and efficiency to the patient care
process.
"WellPoint views electronic prescribing as an essential tool in providing high-quality, safe and
cost-effective care to our members,” said Charles Kennedy, M.D., Vice President of Health
Information Technology for WellPoint. “We are excited about the potential of the NEPSI program
to improve care when executed by our network physicians."
To add local presence and expertise, NEPSI also includes more than a dozen of the most
prestigious and leading academic medical centers, integrated delivery networks and physician
groups representing thousands of physicians across the country. These organizations will serve
as regional supporters of NEPSI, leading the delivery and support of electronic prescribing to
physicians in their states and regions by providing education, training, incentives and local
physician support.
Leading healthcare provider organizations acting as regional supporters of the NEPSI rollout of
free electronic prescribing include: Advocate Health Partners, Mount Prospect, IL; Brown &
Toland Medical Group, San Francisco, CA; Delta Health Alliance/University of Mississippi Medical
Center, Stoneville, MS; George Washington University Medical Faculty Associates, Washington,
DC; Healthcare Partners Medical Group, Torrance, CA; Holston Medical Group, Kingsport, TN;
LSU Health Network, New Orleans, LA; MaineGeneral Health, Augusta, ME; Novant Health,
Winston-Salem, NC; Sierra Health Services and Southwest Medical Associates, Las Vegas, NV;
UMass Memorial Healthcare, Worcester, MA; University of South Florida/USF Physicians Group,
Tampa, FL.
The backbone of the NEPSI program is eRx NOW™, web-based software from Allscripts
powered by the same engine used today by more than 20,000 physicians to write millions of
electronic prescriptions each year. Designed to appeal to physicians in solo practice or small
groups, eRx NOW™ is available free to any healthcare provider with legal authority to prescribe
medications, and requires no download, no new hardware, and minimal training.
The product includes the ability to quickly generate secure electronic prescriptions that can be
sent computer-to-computer or via electronic fax to 55,000 retail pharmacies – more than 95
percent of all U.S. pharmacies – via SureScripts. All prescriptions are instantly checked for
potentially harmful interactions with a patient’s other medications using a real-time complete
medication database provided by Wolters Kluwer Health, as well as real-time notification of
insurance formulary status from leading payers, plans and pharmacy benefit managers. The
product also includes the ability for physicians to search and find targeted health-related
information for themselves or patients using a custom search engine from Google. The NEPSI
Custom Search Engine was created for medical professionals and enables those using the eRx
Now™ product to get search results tailored for the medical community.
eRx NOW™ offers physicians and patients the highest levels of security available, with multiple
redundant layers of firewall, deep-packet inspection, SSL encryption, database encryption,
intrusion detection and virus, spyware and malware protection for the program’s remote servers.
To ensure patient privacy, all patient information is stored on remote servers in a secure location,
so information cannot be compromised even if a physician’s computer or phone is stolen.
Interested physicians can visit the NEPSI web site, www.nationaleRx.com to register for the
program. The solution is currently being used by physicians and will begin national deployment
within 30 days.
ABOUT NEPSI
The National ePrescribing Patient Safety Initiative (NEPSI) is a coalition of the nation’s most
prominent technology companies and leading healthcare organizations dedicated to improving
patient safety by providing free access to simple, safe and secure electronic prescribing for every
physician in America. The coalition is led by Allscripts (Nasdaq: MDRX) and national sponsor
Dell, Inc. (Nasdaq: DELL); and includes Aetna, Inc., Cisco Systems, Inc., Fujitsu Computers of
America, Inc., Google, Inc., Microsoft, Corp., Sprint Nextel, Inc., SureScripts, Inc., WellPoint, Inc.,
and Wolters Kluwer Health, Inc.
The NEPSI offering also is supported by a growing number of academic medical centers,
integrated delivery networks and physician groups across the U.S., who are leading the rollout of
the NEPSI electronic prescribing solution, eRx NOW™, within their states and regions. For more
information, visit NEPSI on the web at www.nationaleRx.com.

Contacts:
Tarsis Lopez Dan Michelson Todd Stein
Fleishman Hillard Allscripts Allscripts
847-921-8353 312-506-1217 312-506-1216
tarsis.lopez@fleishman.com dan.michelson@allscripts.com todd.stein@allscripts.com
National Patient Safety Initiative Launched To Provide
Free Electronic Prescribing To Every Physician In America
Leading Healthcare and Technology Companies Join in Support of Initiative:
Aetna, Allscripts, Cisco, Dell, Fujitsu, Google, Intel, Microsoft, Sprint Nextel,
SureScripts, WellPoint, Wolters Kluwer Health

Cause of Death: Sloppy Doctors

Doctors' sloppy handwriting kills more than 7,000 people annually. It's a shocking statistic, and, according to a July 2006 report from the National Academies of Science's Institute of Medicine (IOM), preventable medication mistakes also injure more than 1.5 million Americans annually. Many such errors result from unclear abbreviations and dosage indications and illegible writing on some of the 3.2 billion prescriptions written in the U.S. every year.

To address the problem—and give the push for electronic medical records a shove—a coalition of health care companies and technology firms will launch a program Tuesday to enable all doctors in the U.S. to write electronic prescriptions for free. The National e-prescribing Patient Safety Initiative (NEPSI) will offer doctors access to eRx Now, a Web-based tool that physicians can use to write prescriptions electronically, check for potentially harmful drug interactions and ensure that pharmacies provide appropriate medications and dosages. "Thousands of people are dying, and we've been talking about this problem for ages," says Glen Tullman, CEO of Allscripts, a Chicago-based health care technology company, that initiated the project. "This is crazy. We have the technology today to prevent these errors, so why aren't we doing it?"

One of the reasons is that doctors haven't invested in the needed technology, so it's being provided to them. The $100 million project has drawn support from a variety of partners, including Dell, Google, Aetna and numerous hospitals. "Our goal long-term is to get the prescription pads out of doctors' hands, to get them working on computers," says Scott Wells, a Dell vice-president of marketing. Google is designing a custom search engine with NEPSI to assist doctors looking for health data. Insurance companies such as Aetna have pledged to provide incentives for physicians using e-prescription systems.

Although some doctors have been prescribing electronically for years, many still use pen and paper. This is the first national effort to make a Web-based tool free for all doctors. Tullman says that even though 90% of the country's approximately 550,000 doctors have access to the Internet, fewer than 10% of them have invested the time and money required to begin using electronic medical records or e-prescriptions.

By providing doctors with free tools and support—and perhaps a little prodding from the big insurers who pay the bills—the NEPSI alliance hopes to encourage a quickening in adoption of electronic prescribing. Because the new program is Web-based, no special software or hardware is required, and NEPSI says the new system takes 15 minutes to learn. Sprint plans to give away 1,000 web-enabled phones to be used to transmit e-prescriptions and to demonstrate the technology's ease of use. To keep pharmacies plugged into the new system, SureScripts, which links pharmacies around the country much like the national ATM network connects banks, will handle the e-prescriptions traffic from doctors to the country's 55,000 pharmacies.

Automation should eliminate many of the errors that occur when pharmacists misunderstand or misrecord medication names or dosages conveyed messily on paper or hurriedly by phone. Given that there are more than 17,000 pharmaceutical brands and generics available, a spoken request for Celebrex, for instance, can be mistaken for Celexa, or a notation requesting 150 milligrams of a drug might be read as 1500. In electronic systems, drugs and dosages are selected from menus to prevent input errors, and pharmacists don't need to re-enter information.

SureScripts CEO Kevin Hutchinson says one key to reducing medication errors is to get the most prolific prescribers to transition to electronic processing. "Not a lot of people understand that 15% of physicians in the U.S. write 50% of the prescription volume," Hutchinson says. "And 30% of them write 80%. So it's not about getting 100% of physicians to e-prescribe. It's about getting those key 30% who prescribe the most. Then you've automated the process."

Wider adoption of e-prescribing could lead to further efficiency in medical record keeping, which many believe is vital to both improving health care delivery and lowering costs. "Electronic prescribing could be an on-ramp for physicians beginning to use a full-featured electronic medical records system," Hutchinson says. "That's the holy grail."

nations's Capital Welcomes It's First Electronic Prescription

FOR RELEASE
8:00 A.M. EST
January 17, 2007

Contact:
Jennifer Mead
703-921-5328
jennifer.mead@surescripts.com


New Year Hastens Countdown to 100 Percent, Nationwide E-Prescribing Eligibility:
Two States Remain As Washington, D.C. Joins 48 States
that Allow Safer, More Efficient E-Prescribing

Washington, D.C. – January 17, 2007 – Today, SureScripts®, operators of the Pharmacy Health Information Exchange™, announced that the first prescription has been transmitted electronically from physician to pharmacist in the nation’s capital. Less than one month after the Washington, D.C. Board of Pharmacy adopted new rules making electronic prescribing legal, a D.C.-based Rite Aid pharmacy became the first to receive and process a new prescription electronically from a D.C.-based physician.

“Utilizing e-prescribing is a huge benefit for our patients, our pharmacists and our physician partners,” said Phil Keough, senior vice president of pharmacy operations for Rite Aid.
“E-prescribing improves accuracy, eliminates unnecessary phone calls and faxes to physician offices and, most importantly, allows our pharmacists to spend more time counseling their patients, answering their questions, and ensuring their compliance with medication therapy.”

The announcement follows last July’s release of a report by the Institute of Medicine (IOM) that focused national attention on the 1.5 million preventable medication errors that occur in the United States each year. To prevent these errors and the injuries they cause, the IOM report made a series of recommendations, including one that all prescribers and pharmacies prescribe electronically by 2010.

“These new rules present an opportunity for patients and physicians in the District of Columbia to enter a new era of medication safety, enabled by health information technology,” said
Dr. Peter Basch, a practicing internist and medical director for eHealth at MedStar Health in Washington, D.C. “Electronic prescribing has been shown to reduce medication errors caused by illegible prescriptions, improper dosing, and drug interactions. We see e-prescribing as part of any health system’s approach to make high quality care even better.”

“Many physicians, like myself, practice in or see patients from Maryland, D.C. and Virginia and it has been difficult to deal with different rules for each jurisdiction in recent years,” said
Dr. Alan Zuckerman, a pediatrician practicing in the District of Columbia. “When we use electronic prescribing tools today, prescriptions travel directly to the pharmacy computer system in some locations, but, unfortunately, are turned into a fax in others. The changes to the D.C. electronic prescribing rules to allow direct electronic prescriptions is a most welcome change that will help accelerate adoption of electronic prescribing and help achieve critical benefits in patient safety and quality.”

To capitalize on this new opportunity for safer and more cost efficient prescribing, SureScripts, operators of the Pharmacy Health Information Exchange, is working closely with community pharmacies throughout the nation’s capital to immediately activate previously certified computer systems for electronic prescribing. SureScripts has certified the software solutions being used by more than 95% of the nation's retail pharmacies. As a result, the great majority of the Washington, D.C. area's 113 retail pharmacies can now begin e-prescribing. Once activated, community pharmacies in the District will be able to receive new prescriptions from physicians directly into their pharmacy computer systems – instead of by fax or handwritten prescription. The same applies to prescription refill requests, which can now be sent from pharmacies to physicians electronically – no faxing or phone calls required.

“CARE Pharmacies is pleased that the D.C. Board of Pharmacy has approved the use of e-prescribing for pharmacies,” said Gerry Serody, CEO and chairman, CARE Pharmacies, Inc. “We feel strongly that this technology will be extremely important for the practice of pharmacy in the twenty first century.”

“When the nation’s community pharmacies founded SureScripts in late 2001, we began building the technical capability in our network to support e-prescribing between physicians and pharmacists anywhere in the nation,” said Ken Whittemore, senior vice president of clinical practice integration for SureScripts. ”At that time, however, there were only a dozen states with laws and regulations that would even allow electronic prescribing. A little over five years later, we are proud to announce that Washington D.C. has joined with 48 other states that allow their physicians and pharmacists to electronically exchange life-saving prescription information.”


About SureScriptsFounded by the pharmacy industry in 2001, SureScripts operates the Pharmacy Health Information Exchange™ which facilitates the electronic transmission of prescription information between physicians and pharmacists and provides access to life-saving information about patients during emergencies or routine care. Today, more than 95 percent of all pharmacies and all major physician technology vendors in the United States are certified on the Pharmacy Health Information Exchange. More information about SureScripts is available at www.surescripts.com.

Wednesday, January 17, 2007

Draft Requirements for EHR

Draft requirements for electronic health records that are intended to detect fraud and claims errors have been posted for public comment, Technology Daily reports (Technology Daily, 1/16).The requirements are based on guiding principles established during an earlier phase of the project contract with the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT, AHA News reports. Comments, which will be submitted to the Certification Commission for Health IT, are due on Jan. 22 (AHA News, 1/16).HHS publicly announced late Friday afternoon the more than 60 proposed requirements in 16 categories, Modern Healthcare reports (Conn, Modern Healthcare, 1/15). One proposed requirement would enable users to view the method of entry for each piece of data. "Having an audit version of the (records that) indicates which of these tools were used could enable detection of patterns of abuse or fraud," RTI International researchers said (Technology Daily, 1/16).The Web site for RTI International, which created two work groups to prepare the recommendations, states that "the term 'model requirements' used in this project is meant to indicate a product that will be put forth as recommended criteria for future EHR certifications," adding that the criteria "will not become official requirements unless they are adopted as such by entities in the future." Some privacy advocates oppose the draft requirements. Dr. Deborah Peel, founder of the Patient Privacy Rights Foundation, in a response writes, "This draft is yet another instance of ONCHIT/HHS putting corporate interests ahead of the lives and health of the American people." She adds that the requirements "eliminate patients' fundamental rights to control access to their medical records, by claiming that such access is needed to detect fraud" (Modern Healthcare, 1/15).

Tuesday, January 16, 2007

Democrats to push health IT funding, privacy

By Heather B. Hayes
Published on Jan. 11, 2007


Congress did not pass national health information technology legislation last year, but it remains one of few truly bipartisan issues the new Congress will deal with, advocates say. As Democrats exert their leadership, industry observers also expect a shift in how health IT laws are approached.

“Democrats will certainly re-address the issue, and in fact, there’s already been talk among staffers about putting together a new broad-based [health IT] bill,” said David Merritt, project director for the Center for Health Transformation. “But it is for certain that their priorities will differ somewhat.”

Four themes are likely to emerge among the Democrats’ talking points: funding, privacy, systems interoperability and personal health records. Funding and privacy are potential sticking points.

Democrats will likely target funding to encourage small medical practices in underserved communities to adopt health IT. But Dave Roberts, vice president of government relations at the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society, said they will have to be creative, because the Democrats have already committed to using a pay-as-you-go budgeting approach.

“They’re going to have to find sources to pay for it or raise taxes,” he said. “That’s going to be a real trick, since there’s going to be a lot of competition for funding among other health care concerns.”

Privacy is another issue that promises to produce a vigorous debate. House Democrats have long been pushing for comprehensive patient privacy protections as part of health IT legislation, including the right to consent to data disclosure, to opt in and out of electronic databases, and to be notified of privacy breaches.

“It’s going to be a different ballgame because the Democrats are at least going to hold extensive hearings on privacy and have a lot more oversight of what’s been going on at the Department of Health and Human Services,” said Deborah Peel, executive director of the Patient Privacy Rights Foundation.

Last year, the Republican-led Congress largely avoided the privacy issue. The Senate bill relied on existing Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act protections, while the final House bill directed the HHS secretary to study existing privacy law and recommend a single national standard.

Thursday, January 11, 2007

Zix Corporation Expands e-Prescribing Contract

Zix Corporation Expands e-Prescribing Contract with Independence Blue Cross

Successful PocketScript® deployment and program results lead to expanded contract for 350 physicians with the Philadelphia region's largest health insurer

DALLAS — January 10, 2007 — Zix Corporation (ZixCorp®), (Nasdaq: ZIXI), the leader in hosted services for email encryption and e-prescribing, today announced that Independence Blue Cross (IBC) has expanded its e-prescribing contract with ZixCorp for an additional 350 physicians based on ZixCorp’s earlier success with IBC's e-prescribing pilot. IBC is the Philadelphia region's leading health insurer with more than 2.6 million members locally and 3.4 million nationwide.
"Since our e-prescribing pilot program began over a year ago, we have seen improvement in generic and formulary prescribing by the participating pioneer physicians," said Dr. Steven Udvarhelyi, Chief Medical Officer for Independence Blue Cross. "With ZixCorp's help, we now have more than 265 physicians writing prescriptions electronically — much faster and easier for physicians and patients, and safer than paper prescriptions with hard-to-read handwriting. We look forward to continuing to improve patient safety and generic usage through e-prescribing with ZixCorp's PocketScript service."
PocketScript enables participating IBC physicians, through a wireless handheld PDA, to write prescriptions and then send them immediately and electronically to pharmacies, improving patient convenience. Prescriptions can also be written and managed through a ZixCorp secure Web site using a common browser. During the prescribing process, the application provides real-time access to formulary information, a drug reference guide, drug-to-drug and drug-to-allergy checking, and patient-specific dispensed-drug lists.
"IBC continues to demonstrate its leadership in this market by fueling the broader adoption of e-prescribing technology in the state of Pennsylvania," said Rick Spurr, chief executive officer for ZixCorp. "We’re proud to have been selected as the vendor for this next phase, which represents yet another expansion of a successful e-prescribing program."
About Independence Blue Cross Independence Blue Cross is the leading health insurer in Southeastern Pennsylvania. Nationwide, IBC and its affiliates provide coverage to nearly 3.4 million people. For nearly 70
2711 N. Haskell Ave. Suite 2300, LB 36 Dallas, TX 75204 phone 214 37 0 2000 fax 214 37 0 207 www.zixcorp.comZix Corporation
years, Independence Blue Cross has offered quality health care products and services tailored to meet the changing needs of members, employers, groups and providers.
Independence Blue Cross recently received the highest ratings from the National Committee for Quality Assurance for its HMO and PPO health care plans. In addition, in 2005, Independence Blue Cross's Personal Choice was rated the No. 1 PPO in the nation and its Keystone HMO was ranked the No. 1 HMO in the region by health care consumers in a leading independent consumer magazine.
About Zix Corporation
Zix Corporation (ZixCorp®) provides easy-to-use-and-deploy email encryption and e-prescribing services that protect, manage, and deliver sensitive information to the healthcare, finance, insurance, and government industries. ZixCorp's email encryption services enable policy-driven email security, content filtering, and send-to-anyone capability. Its e-prescribing service provides point-of-care access and transmission of patient and payor data that improves patient care, reduces costs, and improves efficiency. For more information, visit www.zixcorp.com.

Monday, January 08, 2007

New Congress, Same IT Issues

New Congress, Same I.T. Issues
By Joseph Goedert
(January 2007) With the 110th Congress starting work this month will come a renewed push to get health care information technology legislation through the House and Senate.
Many of the existing I.T. advocates in the two chambers remain, but the power centers have switched with Democrats now in charge.
For instance, Rep. Pete Stark (D-Calif.) will chair the House Ways and Means health subcommittee. Stark has been an ally of the health I.T. industry but not supportive of proposals to broaden the Department of Health and Human Services' rules to permit the donation of I.T. to physicians,
Donald Asmonga, director of government relations at the American Health Information Management Association in Chicago, expects Stark and other Democrats to push for deadlines for implementation of interoperable electronic medical records software, more aggressive enforcement of privacy protections and funding for that task, and more federal grants and other financial incentives to accelerate I.T. adoption.
But increased I.T. funds aren't guaranteed. Democrats have pledged to pay for new spending with budget cuts elsewhere or increased revenue. "You have to be careful about going down the road giving away money when you have to balance everything," explains Ann Berkey, vice president of public affairs at San Francisco-based McKesson Corp.
Watch for Stark to push to make the Veterans Administration's VistA electronic medical records software available for public use, Asmonga says. He also believes Democrats will attempt to require informed patient consent for the release of health information and continue to oppose a uniform privacy standard that preempts stronger state laws. But he cautions that could change with Democrats' new status on Capitol Hill. "When you get in the majority, it changes your outlook on everything."
Democrats may, however, seek to expand the HIPAA privacy rule to cover personal health records, notes Steve Wojcik, vice president of public policy at the National Business Group on Health in Washington.
Of all the health care legislation before Congress in the last session that will come back again, health I.T. is one of the least affected by which party is in control because it has the most bipartisan support, Wojcik says.
Still not easy
But despite support from the Bush administration and major congressional players from both parties in both houses, I.T. legislation didn't get through last year and won't be a cakewalk in 2007, observers say. "I'm not thinking the dynamics will change that much," Berkey says.
One way to remove an obstacle to passing legislation is to keep out language that would amend the new HHS donation rules and wait a year or two to see how the rules work out. "I don't think there will be an appetite to change what HHS has done so far," says Hugh Zettel, director of government and industry relations of the Integrated IT Solutions division at GE Healthcare, Waukesha, Wis.
If the rules are changed, Zettel believes there may be efforts to wave the required 15% physician payment for the value of donated technology if physicians participate in a health information exchange.
Another major sticking point in 2006 legislation-mandated implementation of the ICD-10 code set-won't be going away this year.
The House-passed bill in 2006 included language to mandate ICD-10 by October 2010 and the Senate-passed bill did not address the issue.
However, many physician and payer organizations are pushing for implementation by October 2012, and their influence, particularly the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association, remains strong. "The Blues won't lose clout because they're so darn big," Asmonga says.
Observers say there will be plenty of members of both parties and in both chambers that likely will take leadership roles in pushing health I.T.
In the Senate, watch for Thomas Carper (D-Del.) to introduce legislation to offer personal health records to all federal employees, and for Sam Brownback (R-Kan.) to push for creation of independent health records banks.
Other Senate I.T. players likely will include Hillary Clinton (D-N.Y.); health committee leaders Edward Kennedy (D-Mass.) and Michael Enzi (R-Wyo.); and finance committee leaders Max Baucus (D-Mont.) and Chuck Grassley (R-Iowa).
House members expected to play roles include Stark, Patrick Kennedy (D-R.I.), Tim Murphy (R-Pa.), John Dingell (D-Mich.), Henry Waxman (D-Calif.), Frank Pallone (D-N.J.) and Jim McCrery (R-La.).

Thursday, January 04, 2007

HIT movers and shakers in 2007

Industry leaders identify movers and shakers to watch in 2007
By Bernie Monegain, Editor
01/03/07
Since President Bush mentioned the electronic medical record in his 2004 State of the Union Address, the concept of automating healthcare has become part of everyday talk. A concept that may have seemed abstract to many just three years ago seems complex, but doable today.
It won’t be that simple or quick, of course, to transform a behemoth into a smart, new machine, industry insiders say. But, there are plenty of movers and shakers doing their part.
Healthcare IT News asked a few of these leaders to identify who – besides themselves – would likely influence healthcare IT initiatives in 2007. Who is worth watching?
Some familiar names – and initiatives – emerged.
William F. Jessee, MD, president and CEO of the Medical Group Management Association, predicts there will be a flock of players in the personal health records space. He mentioned the recent launch of Dossia by a coalition of employers led by Intel, followed by a similar announcement from America’s Health Insurance Plans and the Blue Cross Blue Shield Association. Jessee expects ICW, a German company, to make a splash in the U.S. market in 2007 with its LifeSensor PHR, a product he says is already well proven in Europe.
“What is new in all this,” said Jessee, “is the idea of encouraging consumers to create their own PHR as a ‘pull-through’ strategy to get more physicians to use EHRs that can interface with those PHRs. Unfortunately, Dossia is more of a concept than a product at this point, but it demonstrates the kind of large corporate investments that I think we are likely to see more of in 2007.”
Concept or product, the prospect of Dossia was enough to put Intel Chairman Craig Barrett on Jeffrey Hill’s list of potentially top influencers for 2007. Hill is CEO of Anceta, a subsidiary of the American Medical Group Association. Hill admires Barrett for taking the lead on personal health records.
“He’s not going to sit and wait until it all gets fixed,” he said.
The AMGA itself is not sitting still, having charged Anceta with gathering data from its membership of more than 300 large multi-specialty groups for comparison and analysis.
Hill credits Donald W. Fisher, AMGA president and CEO, with the vision to get the comparative data project launched and for creating a direction for other critical initiatives, such as CAPP, the Council of Accountable Physician Practices, which promotes a model of care focused on performance, efficiency, use of electronic clinical systems and results-based reimbursement.
“He’s the one who is tying all these things together,” Hill said,
Hill expects continued accomplishments on the healthcare IT front from Janet Marchibroda, CEO of eHealth Initiative. Marchibroda has been brilliant at pulling together all the different factions that – together – can transform healthcare, he said.
Francois de Brantes, from GE who, as head of Bridges to Excellence, has dedicated himself to effecting change, is on Hill's movers and shakers list, too. de Brantes is developing a model of pay for performance and “trying to get his hands on data in the real world,” Hill said.
Donald Mon, vice president of practice leadership at the American Health Information Management Association will be watching who fills top positions at JCAHO (the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations) and Health Level 7, a standards development organization.
Mon is also keeping his eye on Robert Kolodner, MD, the nation’s interim healthcare IT chief. If he stays in the position, he could have broad influence.
Carolyn Clancy is director of the government’s American Healthcare Research and Quality. It will be interesting to see how she leads the AHIC (American Health Information Community) quality work group, Mon said, and what AHRQ does to advance quality reporting across the country.
Mark Leavitt, MD, chairman of the Certification Commission on Healthcare Information Technology, is another leader expected to accomplish great things, Mon indicated. He noted that Leavitt has deftly handled the process of certifying ambulatory EHRs. Now Leavitt faces new challenges as the commission begins certifying network components and specialty areas.
On the project front, Jessee of the MGMA predicts that hospitals are finally about to turn the corner on their IT investments. “Many of them have been in the selection/development mode, and more are going to transition into an operational mode in 2007,” he said. “So the stars will be those organizations and vendors that have done a good job of preparing to throw the switch – and the horror stories will be those that haven’t.
“The number of stories – both successes and failures – will really take an upswing in 2007 as more and more systems come online.”

Wednesday, January 03, 2007

Hawaii Blues to Docs: We'll Help With EMRs

Hawaii Blues to Docs: We'll Help with EMRs
By Joseph Goedert
A $50 million program from the Hawaii Medical Service Association, under which the Blues plan would give providers substantial financial help to purchase electronic medical records systems, could wire up most physicians in the state.
"I think it will come close to covering the whole market," says Patrick Kennedy, president at PJ Consulting, a Rockville, Md.-based consulting firm serving payers. "Fifty million will go a long way out there."
Honolulu-based HSMA also thinks the program will foster the longer-term goal of establishing regional health information organizations. "We're making this investment to move the community along to wider adoption of I.T. so we can be ready for RHIO activity," says Cliff Cisco, senior vice president. "There's a lot of RHIO talk, but we're a ways off from implementing a network. We want to prepare for that and give motivation."
Under the three-year HMSA Initiative for Innovation and Quality, the plan has committed $20 million to the purchase of EMRs for physician practices. It will contribute up to half the cost of an EMR, capped at $20,000 per physician, for about 1,000 physicians.
The remaining $30 million of the funding, to be given out over three years, is available to state hospitals in Hawaii to finance proposed projects-that could include use of information technologies-to improve patient care and outcomes. Cisco believes a "significant" amount of funds under the hospital program will go toward I.T., but the overall goal is to reduce practice variances and improve safety. Details of the program remain under development. "We've made the commitment and now are talking to hospitals," he adds.
Getting the docs
Hawaii has about 2,200 practicing physicians. About half are closely affiliated with urban hospitals, and many of their practices are using some clinical software.
The program to help pay for EMRs is open to any physician who doesn't have EMR software. But the focus will be on small and rural practices where adoption rates are low. HMSA hopes it will get most of these practices to take up its offer, Cisco says. "This is an effort to bring on slower adopters of the technology."
The Blues plan this fall was developing criteria for EMRs purchased with its financial assistance. "They'd have to be known systems with wide adoption rates," Cisco says. "We're not going to pay $20,000 for a system someone's nephew built in his garage."
The EMRs also will have to be certified by the Certification Commission for Healthcare Information Technology. HMSA expected to have a list of acceptable EMRs available by the end of 2006.
Heavy penetration of EMRs in Hawaii could support more comprehensive pay-for-performance programs. HMSA for five years has had a pay-for-performance program that gives physicians and hospitals "modest" payments for meeting certain quality standards, Cisco says. The new initiative is much larger than existing P4P programs, he notes. "Our board thought we'd ramp this up a bit, put out this $50 million commitment and see what it achieved."
Joining the fray
Several other Blues plans-particularly Highmark Inc. in Pennsylvania, CareFirst in Maryland, and Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Massachusetts-have launched significant initiatives to help defray physician costs for EMRs.
HMSA has an advantage, however, because the Blues plan controls 80% of the private insurance market in Hawaii, says Kennedy, the consultant. That's about three times the market share of most Blues plans.
Consequently, other Blues can't expect to get the same type of return on investment that HMSA should get, he adds.
Nor can other commercial insurers expect the same ROI, even large ones like Aetna Inc., Cigna Corp. and UnitedHealth Group. Despite their size, these national payers don't have a dominant market share in most of their regions, Kennedy says.
But many commercial insurers are talking with Blues plans about cooperating in regional I.T. incentive strategies, he notes.
Payers, however, are not yet convinced that state laws-and the recently changed federal rules governing the Stark Act and anti-kickback laws-are clear enough to allow the insurers to work together, Kennedy adds. "They're not sure they can do this without getting their hands slapped."

Tuesday, January 02, 2007

Improving Health Care Access: Grantmakers Share Their Experiences

Improving Health Care Access: Grantmakers Share Their Experiences

This report is a collection of profiles that tells the stories of how health funders across the country are working to improve access to health care. With these profiles, we have attempted to capture the priorities, funding strategies, accomplishments, and challenges of a cross section of grantmakers, giving readers a place to look for insights that they can adapt to their own circumstances.


The report profiles the work of 11 foundations: Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts Foundation, The California Endowment, The Health Foundation of Greater Cincinnati, Robert Wood Johnson Foundation, The Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation, W.K. Kellogg Foundation, Maine Health Access Foundation, Quantum Foundation (West Palm Beach, Florida), The Rhode Island Foundation, Rose Community Foundation (Denver, Colorado), and Universal Health Care Foundation of Connecticut.

Related Information
Improving Access to Health Care Improving Access to Health Care (1386K)
[download]
Improving Access Executive Summary Improving Access Executive Summary (77K)
[download]

Ahead for 2007: Open-source software for RHIOs?

The California HealthCare Foundation is considering turning the software developed for the Santa Barbara County Care Data Exchange into an open-source software product that other regional health information organizations (RHIOs) could use.

Foundation officials revealed their tentative plan at a Washington, D.C., forum where people from many organizations discussed the potential of open-source software for health information exchanges. A Forrester Research executive said at the forum that the use of open-source software could result in a 20 percent increase in nationwide RHIO expansion by 2014.

Forrester Vice President Eric Brown said open-source software would not solve all the problems that RHIOs are encountering as they try to establish information exchanges. But he said a survey Forrester undertook for the foundation suggested that if open-source systems were available, 60 percent of the country might have access to a RHIO by 2014, compared with 48 percent without open-source software.

President Bush set 2014 as a target for all Americans to have e-health records. Health care providers could share those records via RHIOs.

In Santa Barbara, the foundation and other organizations spent nearly $20 million on the software that underlies one of the country’s first RHIOs. To increase the return on that investment, the foundation might submit the software to a consortium or other nonprofit that could license it to other users, said Sam Karp, the foundation’s vice president of programs. As a result, RHIOs could acquire less expensive software and easily modify or enhance the system to meet their needs, forum speakers said.

The Forrester study suggested that the software from Santa Barbara could be converted to an open-source product for about $695,000. Even if less than 10 percent of RHIOs used it, Brown said, its existence in the marketplace would influence other software vendors, holding prices down and tending to make products more open and standards-compliant, he said.

Lori Hack, director of government relations and policy at California RHIO, endorsed open-source software for health information exchanges.

“We have to find a sustainable model,” she said, “and what’s out there today just isn’t working.”

With open-source software, users can see the source code and modify it to meet their needs. They are expected to share enhancements with other users. As is the case with the open-source Linux operating system, for-profit companies can make money on open-source software by providing custom implementations and support.

About 75 people attended the forum, and many expressed interest in joining an open-source community for clinical systems. The foundation will hold a similar meeting in California this week.

Tradeshows and Speaking Engagements

IHE Connectathon & Educational Conference
January 15-19, 2007
Hyatt Regency, Chicago, IL

Building Community Health Information Exchange
January 26-27, 2007
Hilton Garden Inn, Bloomington, Indiana
Speakers: Keith Hepp, CFO, HealthBridge
Alan Snell, M.D., CEO of Michiana Health Information Network

2007 EHR & E-Prescribing Summit
January 29-31, 2007
Hyatt Regency Orange County, Anaheim, CA
Speaker: Robert Keet, MD

HIMSS RHIO/ HIE Symposium
Sunday, February 25, 2007
Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, New Orleans, LA
Sponsor

2007 Annual HIMSS Conference and Exhibition
Sunday-Thursday, February 25-March 1, 2007
Ernest N. Morial Convention Center, New Orleans, LA
Booth #5127
Real RHIO's Achieving Real Results,
2/27/2007 from 3:15 - 4:00 PM
Speakers: Keith Hepp, CFO, HealthBridge, Cincinnati and Robert Keet, MD, President, Western Medical Associates, Santa Cruz

4th Annual Health Information Technology Policy Summit / 14th HIPAA Summit
March 28-30, 2007
Hyatt Regency on Capitol Hill
Washington, DC

Illinois and Missouri Health Information Management Association
Wednesday - Friday, April 18-20, 2007
Saint Charles Convention Center, St. Charles, Missouri

Connecting Communities Regional Forum
May 3, 2007
Rosen Shingle Creek, Orlando, FL
Sponsor

Connecting Communities Regional Forum
May 10, 2007
Boston, MA
Sponsor

Michigan Health Information Management Association
Monday-Wednesday, May 21-23, 2007
Kalamazoo, MI

Florida Health Information Association Convention and Exhibit
Monday-Thursday, July 25-28, 2007
Rosen Shingle Creek Resort, Orlando, Florida

California Health Information Association Convention and Exhibit
Sunday - Wednesday, June 10-13, 2007
La Quinta Resort & Club in La Quinta, California
Booth 29

Group prescribes changes


Posted on Tue, Jan. 02, 2007


Group prescribes changes


Beacon Journal medical writer

The days of walking out of the doctor's office with a prescription in hand could be numbered.

Rather than handing over a prescription scrawled on a piece of paper, doctors are starting to send their medication orders over secure computer connections directly to the pharmacy of the patient's choice.

Electronic prescribing -- known as ``e-prescribing'' for short -- is being heralded as a way to cut down on medication errors while reducing costs and improving patient compliance with their doctor's orders.

In fact, the National Institute of Medicine recently issued a recommendation that all prescriptions be written electronically by 2010 to help cut down on medication errors.

This month, a group representing many of the region's largest employers is launching a program to encourage more doctors in the Akron-Canton area to adopt e-prescribing.

The Employers Health Purchasing Corp. of Ohio wants to find 25 area doctors who are willing to be the first physicians in the region to use an e-prescribing tool called ``iScribe.''

The Canton-based group is made up of area employers that pay medical bills for their employees. Participating businesses -- including FirstEnergy, Diebold, the cities of Akron and Canton, Summit County, numerous school districts and others -- employ about 430,000 people.

The employer group is offering the program in partnership with Caremark Rx Inc., the Nashville-based company that manages the employee pharmacy benefits for the coalition's member companies.

The Canton-based group and Caremark will share the cost -- estimated at $8,000 per participating doctor -- to provide training and purchase the software, personal digital assistants and other hardware needed for iScribe.

Doctors won't face any out-of-pocket costs to participate, said Christopher Goff, president and chief executive of Employers Health Purchasing.

The goal is to have the system operational in the region by the end of June, he said.

``We feel it will bring a lot of convenience to our employers' employees, retirees and dependents,'' Goff said.

Records computerized

Caremark's iScribe program gives doctors computerized access to their patients' medication history, allergies and potential drug interactions, said Dr. Jan Berger, senior vice president and chief clinical officer with Caremark.

``We see this first and foremost as a patient safety issue,'' Goff said.

Doctors also can get access to more than 4,000 formularies. Those are lists indicating which prescription drugs insurance companies will cover, as well as which medicines carry higher co-payments for patients.

Armed with that information, Goff said, doctors hopefully will be more likely to order generic medicines and preferred brand-name drugs that cost the patients -- and their employers -- substantially less money.

``We think it will have a positive financial impact to employees, dependents and retirees in that if a physician writes a brand script and a generic equivalent or substitute is available, the system should prompt the physician to write that alternative,'' Goff said. ``... It will also generate that consumer discussion about what more cost-effective options are available.''

Indeed, there is some evidence that e-prescribing can drive down drug costs.

Costs could drop

Preliminary results from a study of four Dayton doctors who used e-prescribing found those physicians were more likely to order generics or cheaper brand-name drugs, said Marc Sweeney, past president of the Ohio Pharmacists Association and chair of pharmacy practice at the University of Findlay School of Pharmacy.

``It definitely changed prescribing patterns,'' Sweeney said.

Another study by Caremark found that doctors who used the iScribe system were three times more likely to prescribe a generic treatment for an acid-related gastrointestinal problem.

Practice already here

A few practices throughout Northeast Ohio already have adopted e-prescribing.

Last year, for example, physicians at the Cleveland Clinic wrote almost 3 million prescriptions electronically from computers in their examining rooms, according to Dr. C. Martin Harris, chief information officer.

The e-prescribing tool is part of an extensive electronic medical record system the Clinic has installed to provide computerized access to personal health information for doctors and their patients.

Cleveland Clinic patients who sign up for online access to their medical records can use the computer system to send medication refill requests directly to their doctor rather than having to call the office or come in for a visit, Harris said.

``It really had a dramatic impact on phone calls,'' he said. ``What it's done is allowed the telephone calls that are really needed to get through.''

Doctors at Falls Family Practice in Cuyahoga Falls also launched e-prescribing as part of a $750,000 investment in electronic medical records.

``You get legible writing, clear concise instructions and checks for drug interactions,'' said Dr. Hugh McLaughlin, a family physician with the practice who's been using e-prescribing for eight months. ``It's foolproof.''

Not necessarily, Sweeney said. Doctors still can point and click to the wrong drug or dose, creating ``a nice, legible error.''

Getting doctors to abandon their pen and prescription pad can be challenging.

Initially, Sweeney said, some doctors find it more time-consuming to switch to e-prescribing.

``One of the challenges is getting physicians to adopt it,'' he said. ``The reality is, in a time-pressured environment, there's nothing faster than just writing it down on a piece of paper.

``However,'' he added, ``once they're up and running, the nice thing is that it ultimately will save time because they don't have to re-enter information.''


Cheryl Powell can be reached at 330-996-3902 or chpowell@thebeaconjournal.com.