Massachusetts ranks first in the nation when it comes to the use of electronic prescribing, announced officials Tuesday at the Fifth Annual Safe-Rx Awards held on Capitol Hill. Nationwide the number of physicians using e-prescribing has grown to 200,000.

"To argue that there are 200,000 physicians e‑prescribing is really reassuring," said David Blumenthal, MD, national coordinator for health information technology, who was the keynote speaker at the awards. "We, however, have a long way to go. Two hundred thousand is probably about a third of the practicing physicians in the United States. And it's that two‑thirds that we are concerned about and making sure that they have the tools, incentives, the rewards for becoming e‑prescribers in the very near future."

The Safe-Rx Awards recognize the top ten states based on a ranking that measures their actual use of e-prescribing. A Safe-Rx Evangelist Award is also given to a single person or organization whose work has made an extraordinary impact on the awareness and use of e-prescribing as a critical means of reducing medication errors. This year's recipient was Senator Sheldon Whitehouse (D-RI).

"I'm honored to receive this award today from Surescripts," said Whitehouse. "I've fought for widespread adoption of electronic prescribing because I've seen the results in my home state of Rhode Island, the first state to achieve 100 percent pharmacy adoption of this technology. E-prescribing reduces cost and increases quality of care, and I'll continue working to make it available nationwide."

Surescripts CEO Harry Totonis presented awards to the top 10 states with the highest rate of e-prescribing:
                                       
1.  Massachusetts                                          
2.  Michigan                                       
3.  Rhode Island                                                         
4.  Delaware                                                   
5.  North Carolina                                                       
6.  Connecticut
7.  Pennsylvania
8.  Hawaii*
9.  Indiana*
10. Florida*

*New to the top 10

"Six of [the top ten states] had been recipients of our Beacon Award Program, which is a way of saying that e‑prescribing is a gateway into success along a whole range of electronic and health care performances because our Beacon Program really was about healthcare improvement through electronic systems, rather than about electronic systems," noted Blumenthal in his speech.

Beginning with this year's awards, Surescripts applied a new, more comprehensive method for ranking states' use of e-prescribing – one that measures the use of three critical steps: electronically confirming a patient's prescription benefit information prior to sending the e-prescription; electronically cross-referencing a patient's medication history with pharmacies and payers; and electronically routing a prescription to the patient's choice of pharmacy.

The new ranking method and associated statistics represent an opportunity for healthcare and policy leaders to track meaningful use of electronic health records. Because prescription benefit, medication history and prescription routing assist in supporting at least four meaningful uses of an electronic health record, Surescripts's state statistics and ranking can now serve as a valuable proxy for tracking state and national progress against the administration's health IT agenda.

"E-prescribing is just the first step in the nation's plan for health information technology, and it is only one component of an electronic health record," said Totonis. "Surescripts is committed to helping these same communities build a more efficient, secure and reliable means of sharing a broader set of health information such as lab results and doctors' notes. This will not be easy, but neither was convincing the first 200,000 physicians to get rid of their prescription pads. Our experience tells us that, working together, health information technology can and will continue to drive meaningful improvements in care."

State rankings continued on the next page.