Knoxville Health Care Providers Prepare for Second Round of Electronic Prescribing Training

NASHVILLE –Tennessee’s Office of e-Health Initiatives comes back to Knoxville this week, in its statewide electronic prescribing (e-prescribing) training campaign, to host three e-prescribing training sessions for area health care providers.

The first pair of Knoxville training sessions will be from 1 p.m. to 3 p.m., EST, and from 5:30 to 7:30 p.m., EST, on Wednesday, May 6, at Summit Medical Group, 1125 E. Weisgarber Road.  The final Knoxville training session will be from 8:30 a.m. to 10:30 a.m., EST, on Thursday, May 7, at University of Tennessee Medical Center, 1924 Alcoa Highway.

E-prescribing is the secure, electronic transmission, from a medical provider’s computer to a pharmacist’s computer, of a patient’s prescription that needs to be filled or re-filled.

“We are on our way toward e-prescribing being the primary means for Tennesseans to fill and refill prescriptions,” said Commissioner Dave Goetz, Tennessee Department of Finance and Administration.  “In fact, e-prescribing is the way forward, nationally and in Tennessee, in how we improve health care costs, delivery and safety for patients and providers.”

During the training session, attendees will learn:  1) How e-prescribing benefits providers, pharmacies and patients; 2) How to access the secure Tennessee e-Health Network; and 3) How to adopt e-prescribing into their everyday workflow for better patient care.

Pre-registration is required and attendees must be approved recipients of the Office of e-Health Initiatives’ Physician Connectivity Grants.  To receive the grants, health care providers must agree to e-prescribe for two years. 

The Office of e-Health Initiatives has approved 1,961 health care providers in Tennessee as grant recipients. 

So far in 2009, the Office of e-Health Initiatives has hosted 19 sessions across Tennessee and trained more than 330 grant recipients on e-prescribing.  In February, Knoxville was the second stop during the Office of e-Health Initiatives’ e-prescribing training campaign kick-off.

Tennessee has 2,238 active electronic prescribers, with 1,110 pharmacies in the state accepting prescriptions electronically.

In 2008, Tennessee health care providers issued more than 2 million electronic prescriptions, representing three percent of all prescriptions written in the state.

The Office of e-Health Initiatives is the single coordinating authority for the exchange of electronic health information in Tennessee and works to improve the health of Tennesseans by ensuring providers have complete patient information at the point of care.

For more information on the Office of e-Health Initiatives, visit www.tn.gov/ehealth or call 615-532-5041.

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