Source: Healthcare Innovation
A recent blog post by staff members at the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT looks back at successes in expanding e-prescribing rates across the country and also looks ahead at the work that still needs to be done. The authors, Meghan Gabriel, Tricia Lee Rolle and Chelsea Richwine, briefly describe the 20-year history of federal and state policy changes and incentives that have helped drive the adoption of e-prescribing. This started in 2003, when Congress passed the Medicare Modernization Act. In 2006, all states enacted laws to allow e-prescribing of most drugs that require a prescription.
Now, most prescribers have e-prescribing capability integrated in EHRs. Virtually all pharmacies can accept e-prescriptions, and 92% of prescribers e-prescribe, an 85 percentage-point increase from 2008 when only 7% of prescribers were sending e-prescriptions. In addition, policy efforts to promote widespread electronic prescribing of controlled substances (EPCS) adoption have allowed real-time access to patient information to facilitate better-informed patient care decisions and has resulted in 82% of prescribers and nearly all pharmacies being EPCS-enabled.