Leavitt Endorses Mandated E-Prescribing
Health and Human Services Secretary Mike Leavitt has endorsed a mandate requiring e-prescribing for Medicare, according to the weblog maintained by the former Utah Governor. He did not announce a policy change at this time, but described a future path for e-prescribing initiatives.
Secretary Leavitt noted that current efforts for e-prescribing are occurring, but not at a sufficiently rapid rate. This utilization of information technology directly in the conduct of patient care is an effective measure to improve patient safety, as a key tactic to reduce the incidence of medication errors. Additionally, e-prescribing can also improve the convenience with which patients receive their prescriptions.
One approach he suggests to increase the rate of e-prescribing implementation is governmental power to require such, as the Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services (CMS) is the largest payor nationally. Notably, most pharmacies already have the components necessary to support e-prescribing by healthcare providers.
Notably, the American Health Information Community, the advisory agency for HHS on health information technology standards, just released a series of standards describing formularies and provision of medication histories.
November 26, 2007 Related topics: Trends, People, Quality, Safety, Errors