Nearly 150 Los Angeles County providers who serve low-income communities received free e-prescribing technology in August thanks to a new $300,000 pilot program by L.A. Care Health Plan. Through a partnership with Zix Corp., a Dallas-based communications company, L.A. Care has offered healthcare providers a handheld personal digital assistant to review a patient's medication history, access drug formularies, check for drug interactions and electronically send prescriptions to an offsite pharmacy.

"E-prescribing can help eliminate illegible handwritten prescriptions and reduce the number of adverse drug events from prescription errors," says Elaine Batchlor, MD, chief medical officer at L.A. Care Health Plan. "We want to improve patient care by making e-prescribing accessible to healthcare safety-net providers, who often have limited resources to invest in state-of-the-art patient care technology."

Los Angeles County Medical Association member Joseph Wanski, MD, a Los Angeles internist and endocrinologist, says participating in the e-prescribing pilot has increased the efficiency of his practice, saving him up to an hour a day in prescription writing.

"I write approximately 70 prescriptions daily, and the e-prescribing technology enables me to send them to a pharmacy in a matter of seconds," Dr. Wanski says. "Now I can spend more time with my patients and thus deliver better care to them."