September/October 2007
ePrescribe Florida brings industry forces together to unify e-Rx
In July, electronic prescribing vendors from around the country joined ePrescribe Florida and representatives from public health organizations, medical associations and pharmaceutical networks for a two-day meeting in Jacksonville to develop informational resources for physician offices to use when selecting and implementing electronic prescribing. More than 57organizations were represented.
Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Florida (BCBSF) is a founding member of ePrescribe Florida, which was created to promote a cooperative statewide effort to increase adoption of electronic prescribing (also known as e-prescribing or e-Rx) capabilities by physicians and clinicians.
New technology advances accuracy and safety
Using electronic technology, e-prescribing can improve prescribing accuracy, patient safety and costs. It gives prescribers a secure means of electronically incorporating patient medical information with health plan formulary, patient eligibility and medication history at the point of care. It also enables physicians to review a patient’s medication history to avoid adverse drug events (ADEs), generate an electronic prescription to increase legibility, incorporate prescribing best practices, and electronically transmit the patient’s prescription to the patient’s pharmacy of choice.
Promoting the use of the technology has legislative support. This year Florida legislators drafted House Bill 1155 to “promote the implementation of electronic prescribing to health care practitioners, health care facilities and pharmacies in order to prevent prescription drug abuse, improve patient safety and reduce unnecessary prescriptions.”
In keeping with this mandate, the Agency for Health Care Administration (AHCA) will partner with ePrescribe Florida to help create a clearinghouse of information on electronic prescribing and mechanisms for reporting adoption metrics by Oct. 1, 2007.
Unified effort needed
The aim of e-Prescribe Florida’s July forum was to align e-prescribing stakeholders toward unified outreach efforts, including a ‘one-stop shopping’ website, www.eprescribeFlorida.com, where interested physicians can go to view, assess and select e-prescribing solutions most suitable to the needs of their practice. ePrescribe Florida’s intent is to ensure that stakeholders receive reliable information and to help educate them about critical functionality. The ePrescribe Florida session included working breakout sessions focused on defining processes for developing a clearinghouse of vendor solutions and ways to help physicians and clinicians incorporate e-prescribing capabilities into their practices.
“Everybody wins,” says Catherine Peper, vice president of Health Information Technology at BCBSF. “Consumers, providers, nurses, pharmacists, and pharmacy benefit managers (PBMs). Providers are in the middle, and what they want is vendor choice. That is why it has been so important and gratifying to witness so many stakeholders willing to come together and put aside competitive differences for the common cause of accelerating the adoption of this critical technology.”
Initiated in December 2006, ePrescribe Florida, the first-of-its-kind Florida collaborative, is pioneered by a steering committee and workgroup comprised of representatives from four leading health plans: Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Florida, Humana, AvMed and United Health Care. The Florida Medical Association (FMA), the Florida Academy of Family Physicians (FAFP), the Florida Medicare Quality Improvement Organization (FAQAI), the Agency for Health Care Administration (AHCA), Cigna Health Care and Aetna are among the members who serve on the advisory council. Pharmacies and pharmacy service companies involved in the effort include Walgreens, CVS, Wal-Mart and the Pharmacy Provider Services Corporation.
Summit planned
Prescribers, vendors, health plans and the pharmacy community will converge again for this year’s ePrescribe Florida Summit in Orlando Nov. 30 through Dec. 2 at the Walt Disney World Resort. Keynote speakers and breakout sessions will aim at educating physicians and clinicians on how to select an ePrescribing application and interact with vendors, as well as how to optimize a workflow using electronic prescribing.
For more information about ePrescribe Florida and the upcoming summit, visit their website at www.eprescribeFlorida.com or call Walt Culbertson, executive director, at (904) 651-1805.