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E-Prescribing Possible Solution to Dangerous Drug Dilemma
By
Michael A. Piekarz
Staff Writer
The
push towards using computerized prescriptions for Medicare provided drugs – also
known as e-prescribing- may help prevent dangerous drug side effects and deaths
among America’s burgeoning senior population.
A report published last week in the Archives of Internal Medicine, analyzed serious
adverse drug events received by the Food and Drug Administration (FDA) between
January 1998 and December 2005, including death, disability and hospitalizations.
The study found 467,809 such occurrences during the period studied.
Alarmingly, the number of yearly deaths due to drugs doubled over the period
of the study. Senior citizens with their reliance on prescription medication
were found to be particularly vulnerable. The findings have given new impetus
to a push Congress to require e-prescribing in Medicare.
“This study found that seniors are disproportionately affected by serious
adverse drug events, which underscores why we need to require e-prescribing in
Medicare immediately. Requiring e-prescribing in Medicare could prevent up to
1.9 million medication errors over the next decade,” said Pharmaceutical
Care Management Association (PCMA) President and CEO Mark Merritt.
“By providing physicians with real-time safety alerts and their patients’ medication
history, e-prescribing prevents dangerous drug-to-drug interactions and doctor
shopping,” added Merritt.
Under the study by Gorman Health Group and released by PCMA there are three options
to increase e-prescription under Medicare. All of them are touted as providing
savings in Medicare costs and increasing safe drug use.
The first option would require e-prescribing for all Part D prescriptions by
2010 combined with annual incentives for participating physicians. This option
is projected to reduce federal healthcare costs by $26 billion and to help avoid
1.9 million adverse drug events over the next ten years.
The second option would impose a requirement that all Part D prescriptions be
written electronically by 2010 and reduce federal healthcare costs by $29 billion.
Under option two, 1.6 million adverse drug events would be avoided.
Under the third option, which would only apply incentives for participating physicians,
estimated savings would be $2 billion. The number of adverse drug events avoided
would be approximately 300,000 over the next ten years.
Success in reducing medication errors and health care costs has already been
reported under a pilot program for e-prescriptions that was established as a
result of the Medicare Modernization Act of 2003. “Electronic prescribing
improves efficiencies while helping to eliminate potentially harmful drug interactions
and other medication problems,” said Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary
Michael Leavitt.
According to Leavitt, e-prescriptions remove the problem of hard to read handwritten
prescriptions. It also reduces costs by allowing physicians to know which medications
are covered by their patients’ Part D plans simply by looking at their
computer screen.
The ideal e-prescription scenario requires four elements. Full prescription options
would allow physicians to counsel consumers on their treatment and payment options.
Comprehensive patient medical histories would allow doctors to see not only what
they are prescribing, but what other doctors have prescribed as well.
Providing pharmacy options is the third element that would provide information
to doctors about which pharmacies would be least expensive to fill prescriptions.
Finally, transmittal of the prescription directly from the physician to the pharmacy
would eliminate errors due to handwriting and would save time for patients as
well.
While widely endorsed as a “win-win” scenario, e-prescriptions are
not yet a nation wide mandate. The federal government is operating a pilot program
but has not yet implemented complete e-prescription services. State governments
are also lagging. While all 50 states allow e-prescriptions only Minnesota has
taken the step of making them a requirement for its state employee health plan.
In California approximately 20% of the doctors use e-prescription services. The
national average is slightly under 10%. As concerns grow about healthcare costs
and prescription safety the push for e-prescription will continue.
This page and its contents ©2007
Metropolitan News Company, Inc.
