Rhode Island doctors may still be a long way from giving up their prescription pads, but in 2005, they filed more prescriptions online than doctors in any other state, two national pharmacy groups and SureScripts, an electronic prescription network, said last week.
For this achievement, the state on Monday received a “SafeRx” award from SureScripts, the National Association of Chain Drug Stores and the National Community Pharmacists Association. Gov. Donald L. Carcieri was honored at a State House ceremony along with Drs. Conrad Granito, Christine Rayner and Diane Siedlecki.
The awards are meant to highlight how e-prescribing enhances patient safety by providing a more secure and accurate prescribing process. Advocates of e-prescribing have long said that doctors’ notoriously bad handwriting creates dangerous opportunities for error.
In Rhode Island, the Lifespan health care network has been recognized as a national leader not only in e-prescribing, but for its broad use of information technology. And the Rhode Island Quality Institute, a public-private partnership devoted to improving health care in the state, has been working for years to promote e-prescribing and electronic health records.
Both those efforts were cited as “contributing” to Rhode Island’s No. 1 ranking in SureScripts’ analysis of prescriptions transmitted over the company’s network versus the total number of prescriptions eligible for electronic routing.
SafeRx awards were given to the top 10 e-prescribing states. Along with Rhode Island, they were, in order: Nevada, Massachusetts, Maryland, Florida, Delaware, Virginia, North Carolina, Ohio and Michigan.
The vast majority of prescriptions written in Rhode Island – more than 90 percent – are still done on paper, SureScripts acknowledges. But hundreds of local doctors are now connected to the network, and 89 percent of local pharmacies are connected, the company said.
At the State House event, Carcieri said one of his top health care goals is to have the majority of prescriptions in Rhode Island completed electronically by the end of 2007.
“In addition, in the next 18 months, we want to have 100 percent of pharmacies capable of accepting electronic prescriptions, and two-thirds of all physicians having used electronic prescribing,” he said in a statement. “Today’s recognition of our commitment is a wonderful reflection on everyone across the state who is working on this issue.”
Several major medical practices across Rhode Island have formed a company together, EHR Rhode Island, to sell electronic health records software to doctors across the state at a discount and provide ongoing technical support. That effort is expected to increase e-prescribing as well.
Separately, the R.I. Pharmacists Association last week launched a statewide technology assessment to help doctors determine if their practice already has what it needs to establish a direct, two-way, computer-to-computer connection with local pharmacies.
