E-Prescribing Continues Rapid Growth

While there are at least two sides to every story, one of the more one-sided stories in health IT is the degree to which e-prescribing has taken hold across the healthcare sector. By “one-sided”, of course, we mean e-prescribing is widely viewed in a positive light, and a new briefing paper from ONC gives some numbers that reveal just how quickly e-prescribing is being adopted.

The brief describes changes in e-prescribing at the national and state level between December 2008 and June 2012, and in it ONC examined changes in rates of physician e-prescribing, pharmacy capability to accept e-prescriptions and the volume of e-prescriptions.

Some of the findings include:

• In December 2008, 7% of physicians in the U.S. were e-prescribing using an EHR; by June 2012, almost half (48%) of physicians were e-prescribing using an EHR on the Surescripts network...