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Ask any physician to name one of the major pains of daily office management, and he or she will tell you it’s patients calling in for prescription refills. Since its inception, Shared Health has helped participating physicians with that problem.

Bruce Taffel, MD, Shared Health’s chief medical officer, estimated that more than 10,000 electronic prescriptions have been issued by physicians through Shared Health’s network just since the beginning of 2008. He expects that number to rise substantially with Shared Health’s introduction of its new platform, called Clinical Xchange. The system uses the power of HIT giant AllScripts to further integrate a patient’s health record into the mix.

Brian Young, Shared Health’s clinical product manager, said the new system will provide a drug utilization review, alert doctors to potential drug interactions and drug-allergy interactions, and guide physicians toward formulary compliance. “So from a cost perspective, we can help the consumer — and actually everybody who’s involved — reduce cost. The health plan wins by getting formulary compliance, the patient wins and the physician wins because they don’t have the patient calling back (asking for a less expensive drug),” Young said.

In March, Shared Health launched a new ePrescribing initiative to bring rural physicians into the fold. Along with the Bureau of TennCare, Shared Health introduced a pilot program with 50 rural physicians in 13 Tennessee counties. Those doctors have received all the tools free of charge, as well as training and support, to directly route prescriptions to participating pharmacies. The doctors also then have access to Shared Health’s medication database, patient prescription histories, dosage levels, patient interactions and insurance formularies. “This pilot will help us learn more about the process of electronic prescribing, providing insights into how we can make these effective applications even better,” Taffel said.

Results of the pilot project will be compiled and released later this summer. The final report will delineate prescription patterns for participants, trends for generic use, the level of provider satisfaction and other factors.



July 2008

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