I have a personal story to tell that helps me atleast understand some of the issues involved with Healthcare IT and the HITECH incentives that are in place for demonstrating meaningful use of a certified EHR system.

One such criteria that providers must meet is for using their certified EHR for e-prescribing to 40 % of all prescriptions written.

So I took note recently when I had to contact my doctor at the medical clinic that I go to ask him to give me a new prescription.

In order to contact the doctor (since the clinic is an hour’s drive away) I had to leave a message and hope for a timely response.

Then he would attempt to return my call and I would invariably miss his call.

At one point, he left a message stating that he had called in my new prescription to a pharmacy near where I live.

So I contacted the pharmacy and they said they had not heard from any doctor and there was not any record of a new prescription called in for me.

So I started all over with attempting to contact my doctor, leaving a message, etc. – you get the idea.

I began to realize how poor the communication was.

And then I thought about my recent training session with Practice Fusion which is a free, web based (and certified) EMR that has a free e-prescribing feature.

Wow, and my clinic which is a mid-sized organization obviously does not have e-prescribing.

Are they forgoing the incentive money that is available to them?

Apparently so.

That seems strange to me since the incentive monies are significant.

And I had to reflect on the fact that Practice Fusion is free and yet has this e-Prescribing capability.

That just made me feel that much better about being a Practice Fusion consultant.

Here is a link to a page on their website that discusses their:  e-Prescribing module.

Here is a video that shows how it works:

httpvh://youtu.be/gEwFbGzO46o

And this next video shows how you activate the e-Prescribing feature within Practice Fusion:

httpvh://youtu.be/v-sWAx16OcE

I was amazed at how little information my doctor seemed to have about my situation and past medication history, etc.

I hope my clinic is not representative of clinics nationwide; but I have a feeling that it may be.

No wonder there is such a push going on by the government to require providers to modernize their healthcare IT systems and capabilities.

I see the obvious need.

Here is final video that shows how the doctor has all information available for authorizing a refill from his dashboard in Practice Fusion:

httpvh://youtu.be/ZS3WzpB6NUg