CompTIA Hails U.S. House's E-Prescription Bill as Important Advance for Health Information Technology, U.S. Healthcare - Urges U.S. Senate to Follow Suit

Business Wire, June 27, 2008

WASHINGTON -- The following statement may be attributed to Roger Cochetti, Group Director of U.S. Public Policy for the Computing Technology Industry Association (CompTIA):

"CompTIA hails this week's House passage of H.R. 6331 (the Medicare Improvements for Patients and Providers Act) - a bill which, among other things, provides Medicare incentives to doctors to utilize e-prescription tools and related Health Information Technology (HIT). The Act represents an important step forward in bringing the benefits of HIT to the American public. We hope the Senate quickly follows suit on this important matter with their return early next month.

"Even with the advent of the Internet, and nearly one-billion people with PCs worldwide, the vast majority of U.S. doctors' prescriptions get filled out in hand-written form. Their simplicity, however, has legitimate public safety implications. Handwritten prescriptions - often times compromised at the start due to the hand writing style used - can lead to potentially life-threatening situations for patients, such as: application of the wrong medicines, improper dosing instructions of those medicines, and lack of instantaneous cross-reference to harmful drug interactions and/or reactions, to name but a few. Moreover, hand-written prescriptions are subject to loss, theft and abuse in ways that are far more difficult than if the prescription is e-prescribed and transmitted electronically to the pharmacy.

"E-prescription tools, combined with HIT in doctors' offices and pharmacies, hold immense promise to reduce these risks and errors. In doing so, they not only will help improve U.S. healthcare and save lives, they will work to reduce significant costs associated with the once-handwritten prescription form.

"Rising healthcare costs for the core of CompTIA's membership - our so-called Valued-Added-Resellers (VARs) - ranks as their number one policy concern. For these typically small companies, providing healthcare to employees has become the norm. Yet each year those benefits take more out of their underlying profitability. E-prescription tools, and HIT generally, represent potent weapons to help small businesses everywhere, including our members, remain socially responsible, fostering the provision of safe and cost-effective healthcare services to their employees.

"Additionally, e-prescription and HIT represent important new markets for America's IT industry, including its VARs. America's VARs primarily serve small businesses, which include small healthcare providers. Because e-prescription technologies and HIT have yet to make it to most of these small healthcare establishments, uptake of these tools, as incentivized by H.R. 6331, will prove a fertile market as more healthcare providers jump to these life-saving, cost-cutting advances.

"When Congress returns from its July 4th recess period, CompTIA urges the Senate to quickly take up and pass the e-prescribe provisions of H.R. 6331 - it represents a much-needed prescription for U.S. healthcare providers and their patients, bringing the doctor's office out of the dark ages, and back into the 21st Century."