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Thomasville Medical Center and Novant Health have joined a national coalition to provide free electronic prescribing capabilities for every physician in America. The coalition consists of prominent national technology companies and leading healthcare organizations who announced today the National ePrescribing Patient Safety Initiative (NEPSI). It's considered the first nationwide effort to improve patient safety by offering a solution to the medication errors that harm millions of people each year.

Preventable medication errors injure at least 1.5 million Americans and claim more than 7,000 lives each year, according to a July 2006 study by the Institute of Medicine (IOM) of the National Academy of Sciences. In an effort to reduce these errors, the IOM has called on all of the nation's physicians to adopt electronic prescribing by 2010.

The challenge, according to the new coalition, is that fewer than 1 in 5 of the nation's practicing physicians currently process prescriptions electronically. Studies indicate that most physicians have been reluctant to adopt electronic prescribing largely because of the cost of the systems, and a perception that the technology requires too much time to learn and install.

NEPSI will help address those barriers by providing physicians simple, safe and secure electronic prescribing at no cost. NEPSI is led by Allscripts, a provider of clinical software, healthcare information and connectivity solutions, and by national sponsor Dell Computers. Other technology companies sponsoring NEPSI are Cisco Systems, Fujitsu Computers of America, Google, Microsoft, Sprint Nextel, SureScripts and Wolters Kluwer Health.

To add local presence and expertise, NEPSI also includes healthcare organizations such as Thomasville Medical Center and Novant Health and about a dozen other integrated health systems, academic medical centers and physician groups representing thousands of doctors across the country. These organizations will serve as regional supporters of NEPSI, leading the delivery and support of electronic prescribing to physicians in their states and regions by providing education, training, incentives and local physician support. Novant is the only participating healthcare system in North Carolina.

NEPSI announced the comprehensive initiative January 16, 2007 at a press conference at the National Press Club in Washington, DC. Stephen Wallenhaupt, MD, Novant Health's Chief Medical Officer, participated in that national press conference. Dr. Wallenhaupt commented that the ePrescribing project aligns with Novant's and Thomasville's commitment to support physicians and to increase healthcare safety for all of our citizens.

Novant physician clinics, including Forsyth Medical Group and affiliated Thomasville offices, have chosen Allscripts for their complete electronic medical record (EMR), which they will be implementing over a three-year period. That EMR for Novant and Thomasville physician clinics contains ePrescribing capabilities. In addition, Novant will help offer ePrescribing capabilities to all other physician practices in their communities and state through this exciting national initiative.

Another key element of the NEPSI initiative is participation by two of the nation's largest health benefits companies, Aetna and WellPoint, as well as influential regional insurers. The coalition's health benefits sponsors will provide a range of incentives to physicians in their networks to encourage adoption and use of electronic prescribing technology. Their view is that electronic prescribing adds quality and efficiency to the patient care process.

The backbone of the NEPSI program is eRx NOW from Allscripts. This web-based software is designed to appeal to physicians in solo practice or small groups and is available free to any healthcare provider with legal authority to prescribe medications, and requires no download, no new hardware and minimal training.

The product includes the ability to quickly generate secure electronic prescriptions that can be sent computer-to-computer or via electronic fax to 55,000 retail pharmacies more than 95 percent of all U.S. pharmacies. All prescriptions are instantly checked for potentially harmful interactions with a patient's other medications using a real-time complete medication database as well as real-time notification of insurance formulary status from leading payers, plans and pharmacy benefit managers. The product also includes the ability for physicians to search and find targeted health-related information for themselves or patients using a custom search engine from Google. The NEPSI Custom Search Engine was created for medical professionals and enables those using the eRx Now product to get search results tailored for the medical community.

eRx NOW offers physicians and patients the highest levels of security available, with multiple redundant layers of firewall, deep-packet inspection, SSL encryption, database encryption, intrusion detection and virus, spyware and malware protection for the program's remote servers. To ensure privacy, all patient information is stored on remote servers in a secure location, so information cannot be compromised even if a physician's computer or phone is stolen.

Interested physicians can visit the NEPSI web site, www.NationaleRx.com to register for the program. The solution is currently being used by physicians and will begin national deployment within 30 days.