Here's proof: E-prescribing saves bucks, lives

Brilliant doctors with chicken scratch handwriting (isn't that most of them?) should band with healthcare IT personnel to help advance the use of electronic prescribing by physicians. Why? It could avoid many of the 1.5 million annual preventable drug injuries, said the Institute of Medicine (IOM), part of the National Academies of Science. Another reason? Those errors cost about $3.5 billion each year.

IOM outlined a strategy that included widespread adoption of electronic prescribing and other health IT to decrease the prevalence of these errors. Example: Physicians should use personal digital assistants at the point of care to obtain detailed information on medications to decide which is best to prescribe for that patient. The Institute recommended that all drugs be electronically prescribed by 2010, a date which CMMS has called for in implementing the Medicare Modernization Act of 2003.

For more information on e-prescribing:
- check out this story in Government Computer News