Reports show that e-prescribing has more than doubled from 68 to 190 million e-prescriptions in 2009 with the adoption of the technology by prescribers going from 74,000 in 2008 to 150,000 by the end of 2009. This data was reported by Surescripts CEO and President Harry Totonis speaking at the Annual eHealth Initiative Conference “Delivering on the Promise of eHealth” held January 25-26 in Washington D.C.
Totonis said there is still much more to be done and his company is actively planning for the future. For example, since the use of prescription history has grown more than four fold in 2009, Surescripts has plans in early 2010 to work on a contractual arrangement with Google and with others to make prescriptions histories available for Patient Health Records. In general this action will extend the availability of prescription histories overall and provide improved connectivity. Patients will be able to have access to their prescription information anytime/anywhere and will not have to go individually to each pharmacy for information.
Surescripts is also going to work with a few Health Information Exchanges (HIE) on a pilot basis to provide prescription history to the HIEs at a lower cost and is currently discussing “meaningful use” with the HIEs. In addition, Surecripts is forming an HIE Advisory Committee to discuss and tackle all of the issues involved in making this project a reality.
Totonis also announced that Surescripts as of January 1, 2010 has lowered the cost for e-prescribing services. The company anticipates reducing the costs for e-prescribing by 10 to 20 percent because of Surescripts has achieved operational efficiency and also as a result of the benefits from the company’s merger with RxHub. Totonis says his company is committed to continuing price reductions and as the cost for e-prescribing continues to go down, Surescripts will pass the savings on to others.
For more information on the eHealth Initiative Conference, go to http://www.ehealthinitiative.org/.
