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E-prescribing initiative expands

NEWS IN BRIEF — Posted March 7, 2005

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The eRx Collaborative, an electronic prescribing initiative in Massachusetts, is extending its project through the end of this year to recruit high-prescribing specialists and gather data for a cost-benefit analysis.

As of the end of December 2004, participants had signed 2,700 of the 3,400 highest prescribers in the networks of BlueCross BlueShield of Massachusetts and Tufts Health Plan, which are funding the project. Most of the participating physicians were signed in the last quarter of 2004.

Under the program, which began in October 2003 and includes the Neighborhood Health Plan of Massachusetts, physicians are being offered free e-prescribing software from Dallas-based ZixCorp.

"Depending on the impact [e-prescribing] has on quality and affordability we may continue to have incentives" to encourage doctors to prescribe electronically beyond 2005, said Robert Mandel, MD, the Massachusetts Blues' vice president of e-health. "We may not continue to provide the technology up front, but we may continue to provide incentives that make it reasonable or desirable from the physician's perspective to use the technology."

Separately, a second e-prescribing initiative in Massachusetts has resulted in 750 physicians buying discounted e-prescribing software during the program's 18 months of operation, from DrFirst Inc. in Rockville, Md. Under a deal brokered by the Massachusetts Medical Society, medical society members pay $250 per year for DrFirst's software, which retails for $1,000 or more per physician. The society does not receive any revenue from the deal.

Note: This item originally appeared at http://www.ama-assn.org/amednews/2005/03/07/bibf0307.htm.

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