DrFirst Announces Intent to Offer ePrescribing Through New Online AMA Platform | DrFirst

Rockville, MD — DrFirst announced today that it is working with the American Medical Association to offer its ePrescribing services to physicians through a new online platform being developed by the AMA. The collaboration represents a major turning point in healthcare technology adoption. The collaboration is expected to reduce current confusion around ePrescribing while increasing the percentage of physicians using it.

“As the largest and most respected professional physician association in the United States, the AMA represents a broad base of physicians in the country, therefore this collaboration has the potential to quickly penetrate the market and significantly improve patient safety,” said Peter N. Kaufman, MD chief medical officer at DrFirst. “We strongly believe the implementation of this portal will result in the widespread adoption and diffusion of ePrescribing across the nation to the mainstream physician.”

DrFirst is the first company to announce that it is offering its services through the new AMA online platform. The platform, which is currently in beta testing, is aimed at providing physicians access to information, products, services and resources that can facilitate medical practice and ease adoption of evolving health information technologies. The AMA aims to launch its new platform in early 2010.

“Eprescribing holds tremendous promise for improving patient safety and quality of care while contributing to a more efficient workflow,” said AMA Board Chair Joseph M. Heyman, MD. “By offering applications like DrFirst, we are making it easier for physicians to adopt these new technologies. Adopting these new technologies can help enhance quality while also helping physicians qualify for Medicare payment incentives tied to HIT adoption.”

“With the ongoing emphasis on health care reform from the White House, we believe that with this announcement, the AMA has turned the page on a new initiative that will materially and historically contribute to the improvement of the system” said G. Cameron Deemer, President of DrFirst. “DrFirst looks forward to a long and productive relationship with the AMA and its members.”

DrFirst currently provides ePrescribing functionality to over 50 EMR, PMS, and HIS vendors through its Open Borders program. Many believe stand-alone ePrescribing is a good stepping stone for introducing clinical systems into physician practices. DrFirst will offer physicians using the AMA platform a flexible migration path toward future implementation of electronic medical records and other HIT applications in their practices.

About AMA: The American Medical Association helps doctors help patients by uniting physicians nationwide to work on the most important professional and public health issues. Working together, the AMA’s quarter of a million physician and medical student members are playing an active role in shaping the future of medicine. For more information on the AMA, please visit www.ama-assn.org.

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The AMA eprescribing learning center can be found at www.ama-assn.org/go/eprescribing.