E-Prescribing has proven to be an effective tool for protecting patient health and lowering costs associated with prescription drugs, says Marsha Manning, GM’s manager of Southeast Michigan community health care initiatives. Renewing the program will help set the stage to make e-prescribing not the exception, but the standard of care in Michigan.
In February 2005, the automakers joined forces with Henry Ford Medical Group, Health Alliance Plan (HAP), Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan, and pharmacy benefit manager Medco Health Solutions to launch the Southeast Michigan e-prescribing initiative (SEMI) pilot program.
Since then, more than 1,400 physicians have joined SEMI and preliminary results apparently show significant improvements in their generic drug prescribing rates and formulary compliance, as well as reductions in adverse drug events due to prescribing errors.
So far, the program has resulted in more than 98,000 prescriptions being changed or cancelled due to drug-to-drug interaction alerts, more than 63,000 prescriptions being changed or cancelled due to formulary alerts which increased the use of generic drugs, and estimated savings of over $1 million per year beginning in 2006.
In the coming year, the SEMI partners will focus on accelerating physician adoption of electronic prescribing by simplifying the program, reducing the number of technology vendors, and increasing the financial incentives for physicians to implement and use the technology in their practices.
