Horizon's Health Connections, a program that uses innovative technology to help improve patient safety and simplify the health care system, is pleased to introduce E-Prescribe. E-Prescribe is designed to provide safe and effective pharmaceutical care through improved connectivity between physicians, health plans, pharmacists and patients with the use of electronic prescribing tools..

E-Prescribe includes two technology enablement programs: eRx NOW™ and iScribe. Each program allows participating physicians to:

• Reduce pharmacy calls by reviewing our drug formulary at the point of care.
• Print computerized, legible prescriptions in the office or send prescriptions directly to a pharmacy from a PDA or a web-enabled device.
• Download patient names and demographic data from practice management systems to an e-prescribing solution.
• Receive and review pharmacy renewals.
• Review information for approximately 4,000 formularies on a PDA or a web-enabled device.

Greater Efficiency

The efficiencies of electronic prescribing are gained over time. For physicians who have patients taking multiple prescriptions, the ability to quickly review that patient's history and prescribe several refills using a PDA makes electronic prescribing a very efficient system. The mobility of the PDA coupled with a Web-based application ensures that physicians can easily access patient medication information when on call and out of the office.

These programs also help make pharmacies more efficient. If a pharmacy cannot receive electronic prescriptions via electronic data interchange, prescriptions written using any of these programs can be routed via fax, resulting in legible, printed prescriptions.