3. Electronic Prescriptions/Electronic Health Records

Senators John Kerry (D-Mass.) and John Ensign (R-Nev.) introduced legislature for Electronic prescribing this past March which immediately gained bipartisan support. Electronic prescribing allows general practicioners to send prescriptions to pharmacies online, helping to minimize errors. Handwriting errors and misplacement of papers have caused problems, but one of the best features of the electronic prescriptions software is that it will alert a doctor if one medication a patient takes will react with another medicine. Medco’s Drug Trend Report cites “A recent review of several studies by researchers at the University of Minnesota concluded that illegible handwriting and transcription errors account for 60% of medication errors. They also found that
medication errors can be reduced by up to 66% in hospitals that switch to an e-prescribing system.” Now the government is incentivizing the use of electronic prescription software by actually reducing Medicare reimbursements in 2010 if the software is not installed. Electronic health records are also receiving a big push as they would significantly reduce the inefficiencies caused by paper charts. One benefit of EHR’s is that two physicians could theoretically look at the same chart at one time, reducing costs associated with time. Some of the big players in the industry include Allscripts Healthcare Solutions (MDRX: 12.14, -0.06 (-0.49%)), Eclipsys Corp (ECLP: 20.26, -0.83 (-3.94%)), Quality Systems (QSII: 40.65, -2.29 (-5.33%)) and Cerner Corporation (CERN: 43.18, -1.32 (-2.97%)).

4. Specialty Drug Trend

Specialty drugs are scientifically engineered medicines that are used to treat a relatively small amount of people, but cost a lot of money.