ST. LOUIS, Oct. 5 /PRNewswire/ -- A six month study at Affinity Health System demonstrated that WELLINX ePrescribe(SM), an electronic prescribing system with integrated clinical decision support, decreased the average cost of a new primary care prescription by 11%. The study appears in the current issue of the Annals of Family Medicine ( http://www.annfammed.org/ ). In this study, two groups of clinicians within the Affinity Health System were matched based on the number of patients each clinician treated, the number of prescriptions written and the cost of those prescriptions. One group began using the WELLINX system and the other did not. Pharmacy prescription claims from the insurer’s database were used to compare costs after the system was implemented.
Medication costs continue to rise relentlessly, due in part to the use of newer, heavily promoted drugs. In fact, the published medical literature and treatment guidelines often support the use of more established, better-studied medications that are less expensive. However, studies have shown that pharmaceutical industry advertising and promotion has a disproportionately greater impact on prescribing practices than the medical literature itself. The WELLINX system provides unbiased information that helps clinicians understand what the literature says about prescribing alternatives: their relative efficacy, adverse effects, short- and long-term clinical outcomes and cost.
Dr. David Kibbe, Director of the Center for Health Information Technology at the American Academy of Family Physicians, commented on this study: “The modern practice of family medicine absolutely must include computer-assisted decision making to assure quality of care and patient safety. This study, using e-prescribing decision support tools that ought to be built in to every electronic health record (EHR) system on the market, offers us further insight into the potential gains in efficiency and cost savings as additional and welcomed benefits of computerization.”
“We’re very pleased by these results,” said Tom Lonergan, PharmD, a pharmacist at WELLINX and a co-author of the study. “Prior to the implementation of WELLINX, Affinity had a well managed pharmacy benefit program. This study demonstrated that WELLINX delivers additional benefits above and beyond formularies, multi-tier co-pays and physician feedback, making medications more affordable for everyone.” Lonergan also noted that none of the doctors in this study had any economic incentive to reduce medication costs. Affinity now has over 200 physicians using WELLINX.
Paul Veregge, M.D., is a coauthor of the study as well as a practicing family physician and Medical Director for Informatics at Affinity’s Network Health Plan. He noted: "$575 per primary care physician per month in savings in the first six months constitute dramatic results, but this is just the tip of the iceberg. The benefits to our patients in the form of higher quality care and reduced medication co-payments are also considerable. Moreover, after the formal study period ended, the savings continued to rise, and in the second six months we measured savings for NHP that exceeded $1,000 per physician per month.”
Tom Doerr, M.D., a founder of WELLINX and coauthor, commented: “Based on Network Health Plan’s 35% market share, we can estimate that the total savings for all payers exceeded $2,500 per primary care physician per month in the second half-year of use.” He added, “The main outcomes in this study were economic since it is much easier to calculate cost savings than it is to quantitate improvements in quality. However, much of the decision support information in this system is directed towards improving the quality of medical care. In fact, doctors throughout the country are able to access some of this content and receive continuing medical education (CME) credit from the Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis at their website: http://cme-online.wustl.edu/ .”
Dr. Doerr continued: “This study has positive implications for our health care system on a national scale. Physicians direct roughly 80% of health care spending, or well over $1 trillion per year. However, the information that we doctors use to make these decisions is often profoundly inadequate. We need something like ‘Consumer Reports for Doctors’ at the point of care, and WELLINX was founded to provide that information. ePrescribing or EMR systems alone have not been shown to produce these results, but context-specific, evidence-based decision support information integrated into these can help physicians make better decisions.”
About WELLINX
WELLINX measurably improves health care outcomes and increases physician efficiency by providing evidence-based, context-specific decision support in a modular suite of clinical software applications. The WELLINX team consists of physicians, clinical pharmacists and information technology experts who are committed to improving outcomes and delivering benefits to doctors, patients, and payers. ( http://www.wellinx.com/ )
About Affinity Health System and Network Health Plan
Affinity Health System consists of clinics, hospitals, a long-term care facility and a health plan serving the health care needs of Northeast Wisconsin. Affinity ranked 11th of the top 100 integrated healthcare networks nationwide in 2003 according to Verispan. Affinity’s Network Health Plan (NHP) has been providing quality health care services in central Wisconsin for more than 20 years. NHP’s commitment to high-quality services has resulted in an “Excellent” rating from the National Committee for Quality Assurance (NCQA). ( http://www.affinityhealth.org/ )
WELLINX
CONTACT: Tom Doerr, M.D., of WELLINX, +1-314-993-4378,tdoerr@wellinx.com
