Hundreds of physician practices in Michigan have teamed with Blue Cross Blue Shield of Michigan to help a movement that has made the state one of the national leaders of e-prescribing.
One of those doctors is Michael Schaub who, with Physician Assistant Jake Sauve, has wiped out the danger of doctors' scrawl on prescriptions they write in their family practice. They're among 1,200 Michigan prescribers -- doctors and other medical professionals who prescribe medications -- who have moved from handwriting to electronically producing medication orders in a BCBSM-supported initiative.
"Our handwriting is not always the greatest," said Schaub about himself and Sauve, partners who care for adults and children at Northern Lights Family Medicine in West Michigan's Montague. "But every prescription we write is 100 percent legible because of e-prescribing."
In the BCBSM e-prescribing program, doctors electronically send prescription information directly to pharmacists through a secure Web portal. Partnering doctors get access to BCBSM's full-featured stand-alone e-prescribing management system, free hardware, help with installation and Web access for two years.
"Through this partnership with physicians and their teams, we've helped boost e-prescribing to more than 4,800 -- or about 30 percent -- of all doctor's offices across Michigan," said James Lang, Blues vice president of Pharmacy Services. "The efforts underway by BCBSM and doctor's offices are among the industry's best and most progressive."
E-prescribing results in improved patient safety and system efficiencies. To help prevent potentially dangerous drug interactions, a primary care physician can use an e-prescribing system to see what medications have been prescribed for a patient by specialists. Doctors can view their own medication records for a patient. Upon entering prescribing orders, doctors can get alerts about potential harmful interactions, drug allergies and dosing issues. E-prescribing also may reduce time spent by pharmacy staff to make callbacks to doctors' offices, and it avoids paper waste.