pkaufman
DrFirst Demonstrates the Nation’s First Electronic Prescribing of Controlled Substances (EPCS) system at AHRQ on June 3, 2010
Today marks a major milestone in healthcare IT history. The DEA has officially lifted the restrictions against the use of electronic prescribing for controlled substances (schedule II – schedule V), which have been the single greatest barrier to e-prescribing adoption over the last 10 years. DrFirst is proud to announce that on Thursday, June 3rd, it will herald this new era in e-prescribing with a public demonstration of the nation’s first end-to-end electronic controlled substance prescribing system at the 2010 AHRQ Annual Health IT Grantee and Contractor meeting in Washington, DC. This system has been operational in Berkshire County, MA since September 14, 2009.
Now that EPCS is legal, per the DEA IFR, the HIT industry must catch up on implementation of compliant systems. Dr. Thomas Sullivan, past president of the Massachusetts Medical Society, will be presenting the nation’s first functional EPCS system by DrFirst at the 9:15-10:30am AHRQ Annual Meeting session entitled “Session 1.6 Demonstration of Electronic Prescribing.” Following the demonstration at AHRQ, DrFirst will publically release information on the foundation technology behind its working system. This will include a brief video of the demonstration and a discussion of the technology located at: http://www.youtube.com/drfirst
About pkaufman
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Schooled at MIT, Dr. Kaufman nurtured a strong interest in medical informatics while a Bowman Gray School of Medicine faculty member. After entering private practice he founded PiNK software in 1996 to produce EMR software, later becoming DrFirst’s chief medical officer upon its founding. He lectures nationally on various healthcare IT topics, and as a board certified gastroenterologist, he continues a limited clinical practice. Dr. Kaufman is a member of the Health IT Standards Committee, Privacy and Security Workgroup for ONC (Office of the National Coordinator for Healthcare Information Technology). Representing the American Gastroenterology Association’s (AGA), Dr. Kaufman is a delegate to the AMA and was the co-chair of the Physicians Electronic Health Record Consortium (PEHRC). He has participated on workgroups at CCHIT (stand-alone e-prescribing), HIMSS (e-prescribing), and NCPDP (e-prescribing).