Moving toward e-prescribing

When Department of Health and Human Services (HHS) Secretary Michael Leavitt called on Medicare, Medicaid, and large private health care payers in November to require physicians to ditch the pen-and-pad route and write their prescriptions electronically, it should have come as no surprise. Leavitt has been preaching the gospel of harnessing health information technology, including e-prescribing, for years now as a way to reduce increasing numbers of medical errors and to ensure that patients receive correct medications and dosages. But what he wrote on his official blog on the HHS Web site caused a flurry of news coverage and renewed interest from Congress.