New Mexico E-Prescribing Abstract
In 2007, 27 states received Medicaid Transformation Grants under Section 6081 of the Deficit Reduction Act of 2005. The grants were rewarded to states that proposed innovative methods which in the end of the two years are designed to produce better health outcomes at lower cost.
The Center for Health Transformation is highlighting states that have received these Medicaid Transformation Grants, and will be following their progress for the next two years. In order for key decisionmakers and industry leaders from around the country to learn from others’ successes, it is our intention to provide this resource in order to showcase innovative practices from across the nation. In the future, this site will be interactive, allowing program directors to submit updates and comments regarding their program.
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Historically in New Mexico, health care practitioners have made drug-prescribing decisions using minimal eligibility, medical, and treatment data, a concern due primarily to a lack of accessibility to effective and functional information-sharing systems. The current prescribing process in New Mexico is largely affected by the separateness of prescribers, patients and pharmacists; and is characterized not only by the state’s mostly rural and frontier landscape, but also by a need for improved technology designed to enhance prescribing efficiency, communicate prescribing decisions, and reduce prescribing error rates. Nationally, medical problems related to errors in prescribing are estimated to kill as many as 20,000 Americans annually, and affect many more because of adverse drug reactions.
The New Mexico Human Services Department, Medical Assistance Division, requests a budget of $855,220 in Medicaid Transformation Grant funds to develop the qualitative, technological and collaborative infrastructure needed to modernize the prescribing process in New Mexico. Grant funds will allow New Mexico to utilize new technology to develop electronic prescribing (or e-prescribing) networks. In summary, grant funds will be used to accomplish the following goals:
- Make technical modifications to New Mexico’s Medicaid Management Information System, Medicaid Prescription Drug Claims System to enable e-prescribing capabilities;
- Work in collaboration with key stakeholders to ensure that the needs of Medicaid providers, recipients and systems are represented in statewide e-prescribing initiatives; and
- Educate and incentivize the involvement of Medicaid providers, including rural, non-profits, Federal Qualified Health Centers, and Native American tribal providers, in e-prescribing.
The proposed project will improve the efficiency and effectiveness of the Medicaid Program in the following ways: streamline operations and reduce Medicaid costs; promote generic drug dispensing, parallel the enhancements being made in Medicare; reduce adverse drug events and medication errors by improving practitioner access to information; and promote practitioner and pharmacy participation and collaboration. The anticipated outcomes of the project are to achieve Medicaid cost-savings and efficiencies, and to improve patient safety by transforming New Mexico’s prescribing process through technology that will encourage and facilitate e-prescribing capabilities for Medicaid practitioners and pharmacists.
It is anticipated that the entire prescribing process available to New Mexico Medicaid recipients, providers and pharmacists would be transformed with grant funds. The proposed project will demonstrate to providers that e-prescribing is consistent with cost-effective office management, and will eventually change the manner in which practitioners and pharmacies carry out the prescribing and delivery of pharmacy benefits to Medicaid recipients statewide. The continuing costs of this project after the grant funding period will be mainly for transaction and subscription fees that will be borne by providers. Once the initial technical changes have been made, ongoing costs to the Medicaid program will be minimal and can be sustained by the Human Services Department, Medical Assistance Division.
The New Mexico Medicaid program will follow the provisions of the statutory reporting requirements of Section 1903(z)(3)(C)(ii) and (iii) of the Social Security Act, which are specified in Section 6081 of Public Law 109-171 regarding reports on Medicaid Transformational Grants.
