Earlier this month, the Bureau of TennCare, Tennessee's Medicaid managed care program, and Shared Health, Tennessee's largest public/private health information exchange, launched a pilot program to provide electronic prescribing tools at no cost to 50 rural physician practices, Healthcare IT News reports.
The participating practices in 13 counties were selected because they did not have the access or resources needed to adopt e-prescribing (Merrill, Healthcare IT News, 3/20).
The four-month pilot will provide physicians with access to:
- E-prescribing software from Allscripts;
- Internet connections;
- Training and support;
- A medication database;
- Automatic prescription histories;
- Real-time notification of formulary status;
- Automated drug interaction data;
- Dosage levels; and
- Patient-specific information.
Within 30 days of the pilot program's conclusion on June 30, TennCare and Shared Health will evaluate participating physicians' use patterns to identify which features are most useful to rural doctors. The groups will determine the program's effectiveness by:
- Comparing participants' prescription patterns before and after e-prescribing implementation;
- Measuring the percentage of prescriptions with prior authorizations;
- Studying trends in the generic prescription use;
- Assessing attitude changes; and
- Measuring provider satisfaction.
TennCare and Shared Health will use the analysis to determine whether to expand the pilot program (
Health Data Management, 3/20).