New Hampshire wants everyone to e-prescribe

It's not a mandate, there are no penalties for noncompliance, and no funding for participation.

By Pamela Lewis Dolan, AMNews staff. Nov. 20, 2006.

If New Hampshire Gov. John Lynch has his way, in two years the paper prescription pad will be a thing of the past.

In October, Lynch announced his goal of New Hampshire becoming the first state to have all its doctors prescribing electronically. Lynch wants primary care physicians to be compliant by October 2007 and all others by October 2008.

The New Hampshire Medical Society, along with the state hospital association and a group of pharmacists and insurers, helped develop the plan under the leadership of the New Hampshire Citizens Health Initiative, which Lynch created in January to promote quality of care and use of health care technology.

The electronic prescribing goal is the first phase of a wider initiative to equip every doctor with an electronic medical record system, said Palmer P. Jones, executive vice president of the New Hampshire Medical Society.

But some of the plan's supporters aren't sure the e-prescribing goal will be met. Physicians aren't required to participate, and the state is putting no money toward assisting doctors to buy the technology.

"I would call it an optimistic goal. I wouldn't call it a realistic goal," Jones said.

The governor is expecting widespread compliance, said spokeswoman Pamela Walsh, because of planned pay-for-performance incentives the Citizens Health Initiative is developing with the state's insurers.

Gary Sobelson, MD, a family physician in Concord, N.H., and past president of the state medical society, said even without incentives, e-prescribing is "on every doctor's want-to-do list." The real issue, he said, is promotion of patient safety, and having complete medication histories on one database would be a boon for physicians.