Bellingham, WA —October 31, 2005—DrFirst, the industry leader in electronic prescribing solutions, announced today that its Rcopia electronic prescription management system has been selected for the Whatcom County e-Prescribing Project, a project funded by a grant from The Foundation for eHealth Initiative (FEHI), a nonprofit group focused on promoting quality, safety, and efficiency through electronic medical records. The project’s goals are to improve healthcare decisions in order to increase patient safety, reduce costs, and increase efficiency for healthcare stakeholders throughout the prescription drug writing and delivery process.
The initial deployment of targeted physicians and practices serving as the pilot project has been completed and physicians have begun using DrFirst’s Rcopia application to electronically write both new prescriptions and approve renewal requests from pharmacies. Electronic transmission produces legible, error-free prescriptions, reducing the number of phone calls and faxes between the physician’s office and the pharmacy, saving valuable time for patients, physicians and pharmacies alike. The DrFirst Rcopia electronic prescribing system delivers new capabilities to physicians at the point-of-prescribing by checking drug-drug and drug-allergy interactions, patient specific formulary and benefits information, duplicate drugs, medication history and drug-disease contraindications.
In order to analyze the results of the pilot group, DrFirst will leverage its Rcopia Insight reporting tool and consulting services to examine areas such as reduction of Adverse Drug Events (ADEs) resulting in greater patient safety and increased provider and staff efficiency through formulary compliance and processing renewal requests.
“After a smooth initial deployment and enthusiastic response from our physicians, we’re really excited about DrFirst Rcopia,” said Lori Nichols of Whatcom Health Information Network (HInet). “Rcopia interfaces with all our existing systems, and is also flexible enough to work with the Whatcom County Shared Care Plan Personal Health Record, which helps us create a more efficient, more connected and well-informed healthcare community. It brings patients into the loop as partners in their care. We see this as paving the way towards increased patient safety and better quality of care, while helping us to reduce the overall cost of healthcare today.”
Current participants in the Whatcom County e-Prescribing Project include: Whatcom Health Information Network, LLC, St. Joseph Hospital/PeaceHealth, Madrona Medical Group, Bellingham Asthma and Allergy, Bellingham OB-Gyn, and Haggen Pharmacy. The Whatcom County e-Prescribing Project hopes to expand the project to approximately 300 providers in Whatcom County.
“DrFirst is so pleased to be working with Whatcom County on this e-Prescribing Project”, said G. Cameron Deemer, Senior VP and General Manager of DrFirst, “We believe our joint efforts will make a significant contribution to establish how electronic prescribing can be a significant part of health information exchange and can markedly improve health care delivery in communities across Washington State.”
Physicians can use DrFirst Rcopia via the web on desktop, laptop and tablet PCs. Mobile implementation is powered by DrFirst Rcopia for Palm OS®, which integrates seamlessly with the web-based system to ensure full on-line and off-line functionality.
DrFirst also provides leading edge secure text messaging platforms for physicians, hospitals and EMR/EHR vendors.