Boston, Mass., and Rockville, Md. – July 18, 2006 — New England Quality Care Alliance, Inc., (NEQCA), an affiliate of Tufts-New England Medical Center, and DrFirst, the leading provider of electronic healthcare solutions for physicians, payers, and hospitals, today announced an agreement to introduce Rcopia electronic prescribing to NEQCA’s network of physicians. The initial set of 100 physicians will be funded through the expanded 2006 eRx Collaborative Program, which is sponsored by Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts (BCBSMA), Tufts Health Plan, and Neighborhood Health plan to promote and enable e-prescribing in Massachusetts.
“Automating the prescription process can enhance prescribing overall by improving patient safety, accuracy, efficiency, convenience and the quality of information at the point of care,” said Peter N. Kaufman, Chief Medical Officer at DrFirst. “These enhancements enable healthcare professionals to spend more time on patient care and less on time-consuming phone calls and faxes related to the prescription process.”
New England Quality Care Alliance represents a growing number of physicians who will utilize the broad pharmacy connectivity offered by electronic prescribing in their clinical decision making for patients, all while reducing the administrative workload related to ordering and dispensing prescriptions among physicians and pharmacists.
“New England Quality Care Alliance is committed to enhancing quality through the implementation of leading edge technology initiatives and exploring new models for efficient, cost effective and quality health care delivery,” said[j1] Mark Singh, M.D., NEQCA IT Committee Chairman.
“Electronic prescription technology has many benefits to physicians, pharmacists and patients, the most important of which is the potential for increased patient safety. After much research and consideration, we are excited to support usage of Rcopia by our providers,” said[j2] William Brandon, M.D., NEQCA Quality Medical Director.
New England Quality Care Alliance is promoting DrFirst’s Rcopia because it is a complete end-to-end solution. It offers scalability for large and small practices as well as interoperability with existing and future electronic medical records and practice management systems. The Massachusetts Medical Society has also endorsed DrFirst Rcopia for the past three years.
Rcopia operates on multiple platforms, such as PDAs, desktop, laptop and tablet personal computers, allowing physicians to create legible prescriptions quickly and accurately from pick lists and remembering patients’ medication dosage/interval and pharmacy of choice. In addition, staff efficiency can be increased due to fewer administrative phone calls and faxes, since prescription and refill requests are accepted directly from and sent to pharmacy computer systems. All of these factors allow Rcopia to enhance patient safety and reduce costs with the goal of benefiting patients, physicians, pharmacies and health plans.
About New England Quality Care Alliance
[j3]New England Quality Care Alliance is based in Braintree with over 620 community and hospital physicians in Eastern Massachusetts. NEQCA was formed in October 2005 through an affiliation with Tufts New England Medical Center and the former Primary Care, LLC. The network offers a new competitive platform for physicians in the region, one aimed at delivering and improving the quality of care for patients with an emphasis on using technology as the foundation.
About the eRx Collaborative
Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts (BCBSMA), Tufts Health Plan, Neighborhood Health Plan (NHP), DrFirst and Zix Corporation (ZixCorp®), (Nasdaq: ZIXI – News), have formed a collaboration to offer physicians a comprehensive e-prescribing program. The program is expected to improve patient safety and reduce medical costs.
[j1]Mark Singh,M.D., NEQCA IT Committee Chairman
[j2]William Brandon, M.D., NEQCA Quality Medical Director
[j3]
New England Quality Care Alliance is based in Braintree with over 620 community and hospital physicians in Eastern Massachusetts. NEQCA was formed in October 2005 through an affiliation with Tufts New England Medical Center and the former Primary Care, LLC. The network offers a new competitive platform for physicians in the region one aimed at delivering and improving the quality of care for patients with an emphasis on using technology as the foundation.
DrFirst also provides leading edge secure text messaging platforms.