E-Prescription Firm Receives a Political Boost

Senate Bill Would Penalize Doctors Who Don't Use the Technology by 2011

An Alexandria company is hoping that recent political developments may help its mission to make the barely legible doctor's prescription a thing of the past.

SureScripts, a six-year-old, 50-person company owned by the two trade groups representing chain and independent pharmacies, operates a network that allows doctors to send prescriptions over the Internet to pharmacies.

It creates a single "infrastructure that can be deployed across all 50 states," said chief executive Kevin Hutchinson. "We're the pipes."

Electronic prescriptions are considered a key component in a long-discussed national system of electronic health records. Last week, lawmakers and the Department of Health and Human Services took several steps to speed the transition.

A bipartisan group of four senators introduced a bill that would provide financial bonuses to doctors under Medicare, the public health insurance program, who buy and use e-prescribing technology. It would also penalize doctors who don't use the technology by 2011.

"E-prescribing will save money, save time, save doctors from piles of paperwork and, most importantly, save lives," said one of the senators, John F. Kerry (D-Mass.).

Meanwhile, Mike Leavitt, secretary of Health and Human Services, sent a letter to lawmakers last week urging them to, among other things, put a premium on encouraging doctors to e-prescribe.

SureScripts doesn't create the software and hardware that doctors or pharmacies would use to type in or receive information. There are more than 100 vendors of such technology, which can be as modest as a tool for sending prescriptions or as big as a patient records system.

The firm takes "some of the variables out of the loop. You don't have to worry about which different drugstore you're dealing with," said Wes Rishel, an analyst at Gartner, a research firm.

Pharmacies pay SureScripts a processing fee of up to 21 cents a transaction. The company estimates it will handle 35 million prescriptions this year and 100 million the next. As a privately held company, it does not publicly disclose its profit or revenue.

Despite that projected growth, the number of electronic prescriptions is quite small. This year, electronic prescriptions are expected to account for just 2 percent of the nation's roughly 1.5 billion prescriptions, according to SureScripts.

Hutchinson said electronic prescriptions improve drug safety, reduce cost and are more convenient.