Safe-Rx Awards
The Safe-Rx Awards are given to the top 10 e-prescribing states in the nation. Surescripts created the Safe-Rx Award to raise awareness of e-prescribing as a means of enhancing patient safety by providing a more secure, accurate and informed prescribing process.
The 5th Annual Safe-Rx Awards will be held on September 21st in Washington, DC. Check back soon for more information and follow us on Twitter for breaking updates and additional coverage.
Below are highlights from the 4th Annual Safe-Rx Awards including information for the news media, list of award winners and answers to your frequently asked questions. You can also watch the 4th Annual Safe-Rx Awards videos.
The 4th Annual Safe-Rx Awards' rankings were determined by the number of prescriptions routed electronically as a percentage of the total number of prescriptions eligible for electronic routing.
Congratulations to Massachusetts, and all the honorees from the 4th Annual Safe-Rx Awards.
Media Kit
Below are 4th Annual Safe-Rx Awards materials for news media.
- National E-Prescribing Map (jpg)
- National E-Prescribing Map (pdf)
- Top 10 List (jpg)
- Top 10 List (pdf)
- 4th Annual Safe-Rx Logo (jpg)
- Safe-Rx Logo (jpg)
- 4th Annual Safe-Rx State Ranking (jpg)
- 4th Annual Safe-Rx State Ranking (pdf)
- Safe-Rx State Rankings, 2006-2008 (pdf)
- 4th Annual Safe-Rx Awards Press Release (pdf)
- 5th Annual Safe-Rx Ranking Criteria (pdf)
- Most Improved States (jpg)
E-Prescriber of the Year Award
4th Annual Safe-Rx Awards E-Prescriber of the Year
Recipients
The E-Prescriber of the Year award honors physicians who have
demonstrated outstanding leadership through their use of
e-prescribing technology. The following physicians were presented
the E-Prescriber of the Year Award for their use of e-prescribing
in 2008:
Standalone E-Prescribing Software Users
| Physician Name | City/State | E-Prescribing Software Vendor |
| Dr. Amando Garza | Laredo, TX | InstantDx OnCallData |
| Dr. Steven Green | Lancaster, KY | Allscripts e-Prescribe |
| Dr. Abdul Kabir | Monroe, MI | RxNT |
Electronic Medical Record (EMR) Users
| Physician Name | City/State | EMR Vendor |
| Dr. Narinder Batra | Adrian, MI | Eclipsys Practice Solutions MediNotes EMR |
| Dr. Michael Brewer | Springfield, IL | Allscripts Enterprise EMR |
| Dr. Mark Earhart | Watkinsville, GA | Allscripts Professional EMR |
Evangelist Award
The Safe-Rx Evangelist award goes to a single person or
organization whose leadership has made an extraordinarily positive
impact on raising awareness and reducing medication errors by
promoting the adoption and use of electronic prescribing. In 2008,
the Safe-Rx Evangelist Award went to Health and Human Services
Secretary Michael Leavitt. In 2007, the Safe-Rx Evangelist Award
went to the Institute of Medicine for its breakthrough report
Preventing Medication Errors. This year, Surescripts is pleased to
honor Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts (BCBS MA) with the
Safe-Rx Evangelist Award.
Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts is widely known as a
leader in electronic prescribing and health information technology
initiatives. They were one of the very first to embark on an
initiative to encourage electronic prescribing with physicians
because of its many patient safety, practice efficiency, and cost
saving benefits. They took a very collaborative approach, bringing
in multiple health plans to create the eRx Collaborative - in
itself a prominent advocate for e-prescribing - and to ensure that
prescribers would have access to more comprehensive prescription
benefit, formulary, and medication history information on their
patients.
"Working together sends a message that e-prescribing is important
for everyone in the community," said Steve Fox, Vice President of
Provider Network Management at BCBSMA. "As a leader in e-Health
initiatives and e-Prescribing programs, BCBSMA will continue to
focus on the delivery and promotion of technology to enable a
delivery system that reliably provides safe, effective, and
affordable patient-centered care."
Surescripts is delighted to recognize Blue Cross Blue Shield of
Massachusetts with the Safe-Rx Evangelist Award because of an
extraordinary track record of leadership, innovation and
collaboration on electronic prescribing, electronic health records
and health information technology.
Frequently Asked Questions
What is the Safe-Rx
Award?
Who created the Safe-Rx Award?
Who were the winners of the most recent Safe-Rx
Awards?
What is the Safe-Rx Evangelist Award?
What does the name "Safe-Rx" stand for?
How do you calculate the state rankings?
How do you determine the physician
recipients?
Where can I find out how my state finished if they
did not make the Top 10?
How can my state improve its ranking?
Why are the Safe-Rx Awards so popular?
What is the Safe-Rx
Award?
Surescripts® created the Safe-Rx Award to recognize how
e-prescribing enhances patient safety by providing a more secure,
accurate and informed prescribing process. The award goes to the
top 10 e-prescribing states in the nation, the five most improved
states as well as prescribers and organizations that demonstrated
outstanding leadership through their promotion and use of
e-prescribing technology. The state rankings are based on an
analysis of data from new prescriptions and refill responses
electronically transmitted over the Surescripts network.
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Who created the Safe-Rx
Award?
Surescripts created the Safe-Rx Awards to raise awareness of
e-prescribing as a means of enhancing patient safety by providing a
more secure, accurate and informed prescribing process.
Back To Top
Who were the winners of the most
recent Safe-Rx Awards?
The fourth annual Safe-Rx Awards were announced on June 22, 2009
at the National Press Club. Tennessee Governor Phil Bredesen and
Vermont Governor Jim Douglas presented Safe-Rx Awards to the Top 10
states and Surescripts CEO Harry Totonis presented to the Most
Improved states.
See
the Top 10 E-Prescribing States (pdf)
See the Top 5 Most Improved States (jpg)
What is the Safe-Rx Evangelist
Award?
The Safe-Rx Evangelist award goes to a single person or
organization whose leadership has made an extraordinarily positive
impact on raising awareness and reducing medication errors by
promoting the adoption and use of electronic prescribing. In 2008,
the Safe-Rx Evangelist Award went to Health and Human Services
Secretary Michael Leavitt. In 2007, the Safe-Rx Evangelist Award
went to the Institute of Medicine for its breakthrough report
Preventing Medication Errors. This year's Safe-Rx
Evangelist Award went to Blue Cross Blue Shield of
Massachusetts.
What does the name "Safe-Rx"
stand for?
The award name speaks to one of the main benefits of electronic
prescribing: Increasing patient safety through more accurate
prescribing - "Safe" and "SafeR" in "Safe-Rx". The phrasing of the
award also incorporates electronic prescribing representation - the
"e-Rx" in "Safe-Rx".
The Safe-Rx Award logo design incorporates the familiar pharmacy "Rx" symbol with 'strike-out' graphic to symbolize safer prescribing through the elimination of paper-based prescriptions.
How do you calculate the state
rankings?
The rankings from 2005-2008 were based on an analysis of data from
new prescriptions and refill responses transmitted electronically -
not by fax - over the Surescripts network. States are ranked based
on the percentage of eligible prescriptions routed electronically
in the previous calendar year.
The total number of eligible prescriptions does not include
controlled substances as they are not eligible for e-prescribing
under current DEA regulations. The total number of eligible
prescriptions also excludes preauthorized refills on existing
prescriptions because they do not require communication between a
physician and a pharmacist. .
In January of 2010, Surescripts will release a new state ranking.
Using data from 2009, the rankings will measure use of not one, but
three critical steps in the electronic prescribing:
- Prescription Benefit: Electronically accessing a patient's prescription benefit information
- Prescription History: With a patient's consent, electronically accessing that patient's prescription history from pharmacies and payers.
- Prescription Routing: Electronically routing the patient's prescription to their choice of pharmacy and electronically reviewing and responding to a prescription renewal requests that pharmacies send to the physicians' practices for approval.
This approach recognizes the combined role that prescription
benefit, history and routing play in improving the overall safety,
efficiency, cost and quality of the prescribing process. It is
Surescripts' position that the actual use of all three of these
services serves to define "meaningful use of electronic
prescribing" under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of
2009..
For a full description of the change in ranking methodology, download the 5th Annual Ranking Criteria
document.
How do you determine the
physician recipients?
Physicians are recognized for the outstanding leadership they have
shown through their own use of e-prescribing. The analysis takes
into account the physician's use of prescription routing as well as
prescription benefit and prescription history.
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Where can I find out how my state
finished if they did not make the Top 10?
Individuals who are interested in finding out how their state is
progressing in its efforts to move from paper-based prescribing to
e-prescribing can find a complete ranking of all 50 states plus
Washington, D.C. based on e-prescribing activity. You can also view
detailed
progress report on each state's efforts to date, including:
- Measurements of e-prescribing use and adoption from 2006 through 2008
- The rate of use of prescription routing and prescription benefit
- The status of participation by physicians, payers and pharmacies
- The organizations in each state that are driving e-prescribing adoption and use
- A list of software vendors that actively support e-prescribing in the state
How can my state improve its
ranking?
To learn more about what you can do, and what others are doing, to
drive improvements in the safety and efficiency of the prescribing
process please contact Surescripts' Rick Ratliff at rick.ratliff@surescripts.com.
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Why are the Safe-Rx Awards so
popular?
There are three reasons why the Safe-Rx Awards and state rankings
have attracted such wide scale attention from industry, government
and press.
First, the Safe-Rx and state rankings are one of a kind: They are
the only objective measure of nationwide and state-level health IT
adoption in the U.S.
Second, governors and other public and health officials have embraced the Safe-Rx Awards. In the first two years, we have held statehouse events with the Governors of the # 1 e-prescribing states: at the statehouse in Providence, Rhode Island in 2006; and in 2007 at the statehouse in Boston. In 2009, Tennessee Governor Phil Bredesen and Vermont Governor Jim Douglas hosted the Safe-Rx Awards at an event in Washington, DC.
Lastly, the annual state ranking and Safe-Rx Awards have spawned a "healthy competition" between states.
