Governor John Lynch says New Hampshire is on its way to getting all physicians to send prescriptions electronically.
New Hampshire Public Radio’s Dan Gorenstein reports that Lynch and the healthcare industry see this as a way to reform the system.
Governor Lynch has big hopes for doctors sending prescriptions over the internet.
When a doctor, for example, uses the system, she can prescribe one medication, and immediately see if there are any complications with other medicines the patient is taking.
And when four out of five patients are taking more than one prescription, Lynch says, that’s a useful tool.
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1:54 providers can prescribe millions of combinations of drugs available to patients. Now it is impossible for a physician to understand all the possible adverse drug reactions that may exist... and this really allows the technology to deal with those adverse drug reactions.
Lynch believes e-prescribing is the clichéd win-win for doctors, patients, pharmacists and insurance companies.
He says it should lead doctors to prescribe more generic medications saving patients and the insurance companies money.
He says it should lead doctors to prescribe medicines that are actually covered by a patient’s insurance company, saving pharmacies headaches.
For doctors, he says, it should save valuable time.
Salem family physician Dr. Cesar Quarry has been e-prescribing for over a decade.
A few years ago he looked at how much money he saved from emailing prescriptions.
He says his nurses had been getting 22 calls a day.
After he started e-prescribing that was cut to two.
That alone he says translated into $26,000 in savings.
1:!4 ok, so you’ve saved some cost what does that mean? Well it means my nurses and my self have more time to devote to the clinical stuff. A patient calls and asks a question, I have the time to answer it. I saved 5-10 minutes on that phone call.
As the mother of a chronically ill 19 year old, State Senator Maggie Hassan says she sees real value too.
Her boy has nine doctors and is on 15-20 medications at any given time.
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:52 ...you rush to the emergency room you forget the llist of medications, and you’ve got to repreat 15-20 medications their dosage, their frequency in the middle of an ememrgency...e-prescribing is very liberating b/c not only will it save time and energy, it will centralize the information...And I can’t tell you how it feels as a family member with a patient that that quality of care and efficiency exists.
Last year Lynch set a goal that all New Hampshire physicians would have the ability to e-prescribe by October 2008.
Right now, he’s nearly halfway there.
Health insurer Anthem and phone company Sprint think they can help the state get the rest of the way.
Anthem’s Dr. Charles Kennedy says his company will provide New Hampshire doctors with a Sprint smart phone that can connect to the internet.
So a doctor can be anywhere and get access to the appropriate patient information instantly.
11:49 ...The phone is available for free. The software is available for free...
But there is a catch.
Doctor’s have to switch their cell service over to Sprint.
... But that doesn’t negate the fact that they are still getting a discount they couldn’t get anywhere else. They are getting a free phone that is a $500 retail value. And they are getting free prescribing software, the retail value of that is $500 per doc, per year.
Kennedy says right now, that software will be free for five years.
But he says if the program is successful he believes the insurer would be willing to continue to cover the costs.
Not everyone is as thrilled with e-prescribing and electronic medical record keeping as Anthem’s Dr. Kennedy and Governor Lynch.
State Representative Cindy Rosenwald chairs the Health and Human Services Committee.
She has sponsored several bills to protect New Hampshire doctors from undue pharmaceutical industry influence.
Rosenwald says straightforward e-prescribing- that is sending a prescription over the internet- isn’t so troubling.
What she worries about is the natural next step electronic medical records.
She says there are consequences to doctor’s shifting their medical records from walls of manila folders to huge national databases.
:37 I’ve seen presentations suggesting that electronic medical records are great tool for marketing for the pharmaceutical industry b/c you can- and I am quoting- more easily follow a patient.
For NHPR News, I’m DG.
