Henry Ford Health System Selects DrFirst Rcopia E-Prescribing Solution | DrFirst

ROCKVILLE, MD, February 11, 2005 – DrFirst, the award-winning provider of electronic prescribing software, announced today that Henry Ford Health System has chosen Rcopia ePrescribing to improve patient safety and reduce prescription-related costs.

Henry Ford Health System, one of the country’s largest health care systems, plans to provide the DrFirst Rcopia(SM) electronic prescription management solution to 100 physicians by the end first quarter, 2005. 25 physicians at four of the Henry Ford medical centers went live in January.

“Henry Ford Health System chose DrFirst Rcopia because of its electronic prescription writing functions and its ability to address our specific workflows,” said Mark Kelley, M.D., executive vice president at Henry Ford and chief executive officer of the 800-physician Henry Ford Medical Group. “DrFirst also demonstrated a unique ability to interface with our current electronic medical record system while providing a path to future, deeper integration with our evolving EMR technology.”

DrFirst Rcopia offers an end-to-end electronic prescribing system that integrates patient eligibility and formulary information from Henry Ford Health System with medication history at the point-of-care. The system then allows the physician to transmit the prescription electronically to a pharmacy of the patient’s choosing. The pharmacy connection is bi-lateral, allowing prescriptions to be sent to community pharmacies and community pharmacies to send electronic renewal requests to the physician.

DrFirst Rcopia is designed to produce legible and error-free prescriptions, reduce the number of phone calls and faxes between the physicians’ office and the pharmacy. The system also increases patient safety by incorporating automatic drug-to-drug and drug-to-allergy interaction checking at the point of care.

Moving the prescription from paper to an electronic platform can greatly increase the safety and efficiency of the process. According to an April 2004 report of the eHealth Initiative, “Electronic prescribing can improve safety, quality, efficiency, and cost. Studies suggest that the national savings from universal adoption of electronic prescribing systems could be as high as $27 billion, some from ADE (adverse drug events) prevention and the majority from better utilization of drugs, guided by these systems.”

Further, the Center for Information Technology Leadership estimates that more than 2 million adverse drug events annually and nationally could be prevented through electronic prescribing.

“We applaud Henry Ford for recognizing the value and power of electronic prescribing and for their commitment to ensure that their physicians realize the many benefits that our system brings to the entire healthcare process and their concern with patient safety for their employees,” said John F. Bartos, Jr., president of DrFirst.

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.

About Henry Ford Health System

Henry Ford Health System (www.henryford.com), one of the country’s leading health care systems,
integrates primary and specialty care with research and education. It includes Henry Ford Hospital and four owned hospitals; Health Alliance Plan, a 540,000 member HMO; the 800 physician/scientist Henry Ford Medical Group, 22 ambulatory centers and other health-related services located throughout southeastern Michigan.

DrFirst also provides leading edge secure text messaging platforms for physicians, hospitals and EMR/EHR vendors.