Earlier this year the American Medical Association (AMA) launched a new online learning center to provide physicians with the information and tools they need to make informed decisions about electronic prescribing (ePrescribing). Today, the AMA unveils enhanced tools for ePrescribing and opens the site and all its resources to all physicians.
“A recent survey found about 30 percent of physician participants use an ePrescribing system in their practice. This is a sizable increase from the 13 percent who said the same at the end of last year,” said AMA Board Member Joseph M. Heyman, MD.
“With the current Medicare ePrescribing incentive and the promise of increased patient safety and practice efficiency, physician interest in adopting new technologies is increasing. We are glad to be able to offer physicians guidance on ePrescribing.”
The learning center includes a variety of tools and resources to help physicians, including calculators to estimate time savings and eligibility for incentive payments and planning tools to help determine practice readiness for and ease implementation of new technologies. Some of the new tools include:
- A system finder tool that selects three systems for a user based on their responses to a brief questionnaire
- Side-by-side comparisons of up to three ePrescribing vendors at one time
- The ability to read vendor feedback and ratings from other users, and provide your own vendor feedback
- Automated contact a vendor capability for when a decision is reached.
“Health information technology continues to be a hot issue in health care, and electronic prescribing can be a physician’s first step into health IT,” said Dr. Heyman. “Incorporating an ePrescribing system into your practice can help reduce medication errors and drug interactions and also help prepare the practice for future technologies like electronic health records.”
