Mississippi Medicaid saves $14M with e-prescribing

It looks like another financial success for e-prescribing. This time, Mississippi's Medicaid program is reporting that saved more than $14.4 million last year through the use of an e-prescribing and decision support system.  The eMPOWERx system, from Informed Decisions LLC, lets providers use handhelds over a mobile telephony network to download detailed information on Medicaid patients. Providers can access real-time, 100-day prescribing histories, drug lists and drug interactions, as well as other clinical decision support features.

State officials say giving physicians easy access to lists of preferred Medicaid medications were important in achieving this multimillion-dollar savings. Also, physicians using the system wrote 20 percent fewer scripts than prescribers who didn't use these tools, largely because prescribers were more aware of duplicate prescriptions. The program also helped hospitals saved $922,000 through improved access to drug interaction information.

To find out more about this implementation:
- read this Health Data Management article

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