CHICAGO and PASADENA, Calif., March 9 Allscripts (Nasdaq: MDRX) announced today that Huntington Memorial Hospital, a 636-bed, not-for-profit hospital in Southern California, will offer HuntingtonRx, a branded version of Allscripts stand-alone e-prescribing solution, to its nearly 1,000 affiliated physicians. By enabling its affiliated physicians to convert from paper prescriptions, a cause of costly and dangerous medical errors, to e-prescribing, Huntington is demonstrating its commitment to patient safety and quality healthcare.
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Huntington is home to the only trauma center and regional NICU in the San Gabriel Valley. Renowned for its programs in neurosciences, cardiovascular services and cancer care, Huntington is an active teaching hospital with Graduate Medical Education (GME) programs in internal medicine and general surgery. Huntington Memorial Hospital's GME program has been awarded the maximum achievement of a five year accreditation for all of its programs.
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"The deployment of an e-prescribing system to our affiliated physicians is another example of Huntington's commitment to provide the necessary resources to improve patient care," said Stephen Ralph, Chief Executive Officer of Huntington Memorial Hospital. "For many of our physicians, this will be the first step toward an Electronic Health Record. I look forward to working with our physicians and Allscripts as partners in creating better and safer care for our patients."
Under the terms of the agreement, Huntington has contracted with Allscripts for professional and related services to implement the industry-leading ePrescribe solution to physicians and other health care providers across the San Gabriel Valley.
According to an Institute of Medicine study, 1.5 million Americans are injured each year and 7,000 die from preventable medical errors. The authors of the 2006 study recommended that all U.S. physicians adopt electronic prescribing by 2010. They cited benefits of e-prescribing that include eliminating errors due to illegible handwriting, creating electronic records to ensure prescription information is not lost, checking for allergies and potentially dangerous drug interactions and reducing costs by improving efficiency and identifying less-expensive drug options.
"HuntingtonRx is the on-ramp to the electronic healthcare highway for physicians and Huntington is taking a leadership role by working with physicians to provide them with the tools to provide higher quality, safer care," said Glen Tullman, Chief Executive Officer of Allscripts.
Physicians who begin to e-prescribe now will be eligible for $3,500 in annual financial incentives from the federal government this year. In turn, the government will impose penalties on those who do not e-prescribe beginning in 2012. HuntingtonRx is also a first introduction to the information and connectivity offered by a full Electronic Health Record. In addition to the e-prescribing incentives, those affiliated physicians who chose to deploy and use a certified Electronic Health Record will be eligible for between $44,000-$64,000 in CMS incentives over five years, beginning in 2011.
Allscripts ePrescribe is a comprehensive, web-based e-prescribing solution that automates the process of writing prescriptions and transmitting them to pharmacies while alerting physicians to potentially dangerous drug-to-drug interactions, drug allergies, dosage errors and other problems that can occur when writing prescriptions on paper. The stand-alone solution provided by Huntington and Allscripts also provides physicians a simple way to transition from paper medical records to a full Electronic Health Record, software that automates everyday clinical tasks and connects physician practices with the other key health care stakeholders including insurance companies, laboratories and hospitals.
About Huntington Memorial Hospital
Huntington Hospital is a 636-bed not-for-profit hospital that is home to the only trauma center and regional NICU in the San Gabriel Valley. Renowned for its programs in cancer care, neurosciences and cardiovascular services, Huntington is an active teaching hospital with Graduate Medical Education programs in internal medicine and general surgery. The hospital has a regional neonatal intensive care unit, treating babies with the highest acuity. For over 117 years, Huntington has been committed to serving its community with excellence, compassion and respect. For more information, visit www.huntingtonhospital.com or call (626) 397-5464.
About Allscripts
Allscripts uses innovation technology to bring health to healthcare. More than 160,000 physicians, 800 hospitals and nearly 8,000 post-acute and homecare organizations utilize Allscripts to improve the health of their patients and their bottom line. The company's award-winning solutions include electronic health records, electronic prescribing, revenue cycle management, practice management, document management, hospital care management, emergency department information systems and homecare automation.
Allscripts is the brand name of Allscripts-Misys Healthcare Solutions, Inc. To learn more, visit www.allscripts.com. For more Allscripts news, follow us on Twitter at: http://twitter.com/AllscriptsMisys
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SOURCE Allscripts-Misys Healthcare Solutions, Inc.
