DALLAS, Nov. 19, 2007 (PRIME NEWSWIRE) -- Zix Corporation (ZixCorp(r)), (Nasdaq:ZIXI), the leader in hosted services for email encryption and e-prescribing, issued a statement supporting Friday's Wall Street Journal commentary by John Kerry and Newt Gingrich promoting the importance of modernizing healthcare with life-saving e-Prescribing technology(1).
"We have seen results in multiple payor-sponsored programs showing how e-prescribing positively impacts patient safety and reduces the cost of healthcare in the United States." said Rick Spurr, chief executive officer for ZixCorp. "e-Prescribing is a win-win for all stakeholders in the healthcare system, including providers, payors, pharmacies, and most certainly patients. We are thrilled to see that e-Prescribing can be a unifying issue that can draw bipartisan support and we applaud Mr. Kerry and Mr. Gingrich for their call for leadership on this issue."
ZixCorp fully supports the proposals outlined in the Kerry/Gingrich commentary, including a government requirement for e-prescribing combined with appropriate physician incentives. ZixCorp believes that these steps together with support from private health plans to ease the burden of implementation, training and support, will accelerate the adoption of e-Prescribing resulting in a reduction in both medication errors and the cost for prescriptions.
The eRx Collaborative, ZixCorp's longest-running payor-sponsored e-Prescribing program, which was formed by Blue Cross Blue Shield of Massachusetts, Tufts Health Plan and Neighborhood Health Plan in 2003, publicly stated that as of June 30, 2007, approximately 50,000 electronic prescriptions were changed during the first half of 2007 by the physician due to drug safety alerts, 2.1 percent of the electronic prescriptions written. Blue Cross and Blue Shield of Massachusetts has also documented a 3.0 to 3.5 percent savings in drug spending for the health plan and a $20-$25 savings per prescription for the patient in cases where physicians use e-prescribing compared with those who were not using the technology. More recently, Aetna announced that it had experienced a five to seven percent increase in use of on-formulary and generic drugs, respectively, in its New Jersey e-Prescribing pilot with ZixCorp, which also facilitates drug-drug and drug-allergy safety checks to increase patient safety.
As a pioneer in the e-prescribing industry, ZixCorp has been the leader in bringing stand-alone e-prescribing technology to physicians across the country. ZixCorp has had particular success in introducing this life-saving technology to small practices with one or two doctors, where about half of the primary care providers in the U.S. practice today. This segment of the physician market has been largely neglected in the push for the adoption of healthcare IT, and ZixCorp strongly believes that e-prescribing is a cost-effective and easy-to-implement technology that reaps significant benefits for these physicians and their patients today, as well as provide the solid platform for the adoption of additional technology tomorrow.
As further evidence that e-prescribing continues to gain momentum, on November 16, Centers for Medicare and Medicaid Services released proposed rules to adopt standards to advance the use of e-Prescribing for formulary, benefit and medication history transactions under the Medicare prescription drug benefit. In addition to Messrs. Kerry and Gingrich, several other groups have recently called for the widespread adoption of e-prescribing, including the American Health Information Community (a U.S. Department of Health and Human Services advisory body), the Blue Cross and Blue Shield Association, the Pharmaceutical Care Management Association, 13 of the leading pharmacy software companies, and a coalition of consumer and business organizations.
ZixCorp's PocketScript(r) e-prescribing service enables physicians to order prescriptions through a secure wireless mobile PDA or secure Web site and deliver them electronically to the patient's preferred pharmacy. Mobility enables PocketScript to provide clinical decision support at the point-of-care with real-time access to a drug reference guide as well as patient-level eligibility, formulary, and co-pay information to aid the prescriber in selecting the most cost-effective prescription based on the patient's benefits. The application also provides comprehensive drug-to-drug and drug-to-allergy interaction alerts based on patient-specific dispensed drug history. Through partnerships with RxHub and RelayHealth, and as a SureScripts GoldRx Certified Solution, PocketScript delivers end-to-end connectivity within the healthcare system to reduce unnecessary costs, improve patient safety and convenience, and enhance practice efficiency.
About Zix Corporation
ZixCorp is the leading provider of easy-to-use-and-deploy email encryption and e-prescribing services that connect entities with their customers and partners to protect and deliver sensitive information in the healthcare, finance, insurance and government industries. ZixCorp's hosted Email Encryption Service provides an easy and cost-effective way to ensure customer privacy and regulatory compliance for corporate email. Its PocketScript(r) e-prescribing service saves lives and saves money by automating the prescription process between payors, doctors and pharmacies. For more information, visit www.zixcorp.com.
The Zix Corporation logo is available at http://www.primenewswire.com/newsroom/prs/?pkgid=4086
(1) Kerry, J., Gingrich, N. (2007, November 16). E-Prescriptions
The Wall Street Journal, p. A20