Billions and billions served: e-scripts keeping paper on the run
The numbers are enough to make a doctor scrawling a prescription fumble his or her pen. In 2014, a single e-prescribing vendor connected 900,000 healthcare workers and processed 6.5 billion transactions. If the setting were a multi-industry competition, the latter tally would have defeated American Express (6 billion transactions) and trounced PayPal (4.2 billion).
Surescripts, the company reporting the success, published its results in its annual progress report.
Of those 6.5 billion total transactions, 1.2 billion were electronic prescriptions. Some 764 million transactions were medical history exchanges and 7.4 million were clinical messages.
The company said the number of healthcare professionals connected by its products rose almost 30 percent over 2013, while utilization of medication history data in acute-care settings jumped 75 percent.
According to Surescripts, a 500-bed hospital stands to save more than $553,000 per year by deploying electronic prescribing, thanks to projections of 13 fewer adverse drug events, 22 prevented readmissions and 16,657 hours cut in staff hours.
“The process of reconciling a patient’s medication history has traditionally been very time consuming and inaccurate,” wrote the report’s authors. “The growth in electronic prescribing has made real-time access to medication information at the point of care possible. This is particularly true in acute settings, such as a hospital emergency room, where a patient may be unconscious or unable to tell the doctor what medications they are on.”
Surescripts has posted its report online.
Dave P. has worked in journalism, marketing and public relations for more than 30 years, frequently concentrating on hospitals, healthcare technology and Catholic communications. He has also specialized in fundraising communications, ghostwriting for CEOs of local, national and global charities, nonprofits and foundations.