Better E.M.Rs to attain "Health Rights for All".

Image via WikipediaHeres a study on how Use of e-prescribing can lower health care costs, and bring health care services closer to all, without discrimination. This study quantifies the enormous savings that can be generated by a simple introduction of one more option within Electronic Medical records to choose the lowest cost generic amongst a preselected list of generic drugs (to ensure quality).

"Electronic prescribing(e-prescribing) systems that allow doctors to select lower cost or generic medications could save $845,000 per 100,000 patients per year and possibly more system-wide, according to findings from a new study.

Doctors using e-prescribing with formulary decision support, which accounted for more than 200,000 filled prescriptions in the study, increased their use of generic prescriptions by 3.3 percent.These changes were above and beyond the increased use of generics that occurred among all doctors and the already high rate of generic drug use in Massachusetts. Based on average costs for private insurers, study authors estimate that the use of e-prescribing could save $845,000 per 100,000 patients per year and generate even higher savings with greater use.

Researchers found that the doctors who wrote electronic prescriptions were slightly younger and more likely to be female than those who did not. In addition, internists, pediatricians, and family physicians made up nearly three-fourths of those who used e-prescribing. Of the 17.4 million prescriptions filled over the course of the study, about 212,000 were prescribed electronically. This study was funded in part by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality"

More use of I.T in health care will have a cascading effect on Health Rights for all as it increases affordability, efficiency, quality and information accessibility of health services. And these are few of the basic requirements of Health Rights for All.

 

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-Futile medications in cancer patients.

With early diagnosis and better therapy, life expectancy/survival in cases of cancer has improved dramatically. In many cases of cancer, all that is required is good palliative care.

Such patients take many medications, and many of them may be unnecessary. Now there is a study regarding Futile medication use in terminally ill cancer patients.

Futile medications were defined as unnecessary ( no anticipated short term benefit to patients for survival, quality of life or symptom control) or duplicate ie 2 or more drugs from the same pharmacological class.

The results were better than i expected. About 20% (only?, i think more) terminally ill cancer patients are on futile medications, most commonly Statins (56%). The most common duplication of medication was for the benzodiazepines class.(no surprises there!).

As a doctor, many-a-times i am "forced" to write medications i know is not required by the patient. I usually use this tactic as a placebo.What do you think of use of such "Futile" medications in cancer patients?