eprescribing news from FierceHealthcare

While state governments are doing what they can to promote all kinds of health IT initiatives, none are more popular than e-prescribing. And when it comes to e-prescribing, it seems no state has gotten more of a jump on the matter than Massachusetts, which just won an e-prescribing leadership award handed out by some national community pharmacy groups. The Safe-Rx award, which is given out by the National Association of Chain Drug Stores, the National Community Pharmacists Association and …

Healthcare IT is all the rage--from electronic medical records to ePrescribing, technology promises to save time, save money and reduce medical errors. Hospitals are pouring money into IT initiatives but a recent study published in eWeek finds that nurses are being overlooked when it comes to IT training. Of the 559 nurses surveyed, "one-quarter indicated they had received no IT training on the job over the last year, while another 56 percent said they had gotten only between one …

The personal digital assistant appears to have reached the tipping point in healthcare, according to a wealth of new evidence. In an opinion piece for the California Health Care Foundation, health economist Jane Sarahson Kahn writes that the evidence is now fairly conclusive. A report by Manhattan Research in December found that 50 percent of physicians are using PDAs. Another recent study found that more than 60 percent of physicians using drug reference software reported avoiding at …

SureScripts, the ePrescribing network owned by the large pharmacy chains, announced that it will be providing medication history and patient formulary and eligibility information later in the year. SureScripts will use technology from Initiate software, a vendor of enterprise master patient index software, which will integrate information from the various pharmacies on the network. SureScripts is important for ePrescribing's advance as it gives a network for application vendors to "plug …

An article in MarketWatch describes the change in the PDA market over the last decade and future challenges ahead particularly in the convergence of the PDA and the smart phone. Palm Computing is taking advantage of that market and and is making a play in healthcare, where it sees an opportunity for growth. FierceHealthcare met with the Palm healthcare team recently. Palm estimates that nearly 60 percent of physicians have a PDA--predominantly to look up reference …

> Add a new group to the list of those complaining about the new Medicare drug benefit: Pharmacists say the new plan is hurting them economically. Article

> The Boston Globe reports that healthcare execs are emerging as the state's new power elite. Article

> The Bush …

> Are HSAs like hybrid cars: environmentally sensitive and forward-thinking? Rep. Bill Thomas (R-CA) thinks so. Blog

> Are HSAs the mother of all tax breaks for the wealthy, or the future of self insurance? Another review. Article

> University …

More encouraging news about ePrescribing this morning as the Henry Ford Health System (and its subsidiary Health Alliance Plan) is trumpeting its successful implementation of a system backed by PBM giant Medco and the big auto makers. As expected, ePrescribing reduces medical errors and increases the use of generics (and hence lowers drug costs for payers). That's why ePrescribing is …

The Henry Ford Medical Group filled more than 500,000 prescriptions during the first year of one of the largest ePrescribing projects in the country, according to sponsors. The ePrescribe Initiative is a joint initiative of General Motors, Ford and DaimlerChrysler and the Henry Ford Health System. The technical aspects of the project are being managed by Medco. Organizers certainly have reason to be pleased. They claim more than 80,000 prescriptions were changed after drug-interaction …