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October 05, 2004

WELLINX and Affinity Health System Produce Dramatic Savings in Prescription Costs

WELLINX and Affinity Health System Produce Dramatic Savings in Prescription Costs

Study in Annals of Family Medicine Documents Impact of WELLINX System

    ST. LOUIS, Oct. 5 /PRNewswire/ -- A six month study at Affinity Health
System demonstrated that WELLINX ePrescribe(SM), an electronic prescribing
system with integrated clinical decision support, decreased the average cost
of a new primary care prescription by 11%.  The study appears in the current
issue of the Annals of Family Medicine ( http://www.annfammed.org ).  In this
study, two groups of clinicians within the Affinity Health System were matched
based on the number of patients each clinician treated, the number of
prescriptions written and the cost of those prescriptions.  One group began
using the WELLINX system and the other did not.  Pharmacy prescription claims
from the insurer's database were used to compare costs after the system was
implemented.
    Medication costs continue to rise relentlessly, due in part to the use of
newer, heavily promoted drugs.  In fact, the published medical literature and
treatment guidelines often support the use of more established, better-studied
medications that are less expensive.  However, studies have shown that
pharmaceutical industry advertising and promotion has a disproportionately
greater impact on prescribing practices than the medical literature itself.
The WELLINX system provides unbiased information that helps clinicians
understand what the literature says about prescribing alternatives:  their
relative efficacy, adverse effects, short- and long-term clinical outcomes and
cost.
    Dr. David Kibbe, Director of the Center for Health Information Technology
at the American Academy of Family Physicians, commented on this study: "The
modern practice of family medicine absolutely must include computer-assisted
decision making to assure quality of care and patient safety.  This study,
using e-prescribing decision support tools that ought to be built in to every
electronic health record (EHR) system on the market, offers us further insight
into the potential gains in efficiency and cost savings as additional and
welcomed benefits of computerization."
    "We're very pleased by these results," said Tom Lonergan, PharmD, a
pharmacist at WELLINX and a co-author of the study.  "Prior to the
implementation of WELLINX, Affinity had a well managed pharmacy benefit
program.  This study demonstrated that WELLINX delivers additional benefits
above and beyond formularies, multi-tier co-pays and physician feedback,
making medications more affordable for everyone."  Lonergan also noted that
none of the doctors in this study had any economic incentive to reduce
medication costs.  Affinity now has over 200 physicians using WELLINX.
    Paul Veregge, M.D., is a coauthor of the study as well as a practicing
family physician and Medical Director for Informatics at Affinity's Network
Health Plan.  He noted: "$575 per primary care physician per month in savings
in the first six months constitute dramatic results, but this is just the tip
of the iceberg.  The benefits to our patients in the form of higher quality
care and reduced medication co-payments are also considerable.  Moreover,
after the formal study period ended, the savings continued to rise, and in the
second six months we measured savings for NHP that exceeded $1,000 per
physician per month."
    Tom Doerr, M.D., a founder of WELLINX and coauthor, commented: "Based on
Network Health Plan's 35% market share, we can estimate that the total savings
for all payers exceeded $2,500 per primary care physician per month in the
second half-year of use."  He added, "The main outcomes in this study were
economic since it is much easier to calculate cost savings than it is to
quantitate improvements in quality.  However, much of the decision support
information in this system is directed towards improving the quality of
medical care.  In fact, doctors throughout the country are able to access some
of this content and receive continuing medical education (CME) credit from the
Washington University School of Medicine in St. Louis at their website:
http://cme-online.wustl.edu ."
    Dr. Doerr continued: "This study has positive implications for our health
care system on a national scale.  Physicians direct roughly 80% of health care
spending, or well over $1 trillion per year.  However, the information that we
doctors use to make these decisions is often profoundly inadequate.  We need
something like 'Consumer Reports for Doctors' at the point of care, and
WELLINX was founded to provide that information.  ePrescribing or EMR systems
alone have not been shown to produce these results, but context-specific,
evidence-based decision support information integrated into these can help
physicians make better decisions."

    About WELLINX
    WELLINX measurably improves health care outcomes and increases physician
efficiency by providing evidence-based, context-specific decision support in a
modular suite of clinical software applications.  The WELLINX team consists of
physicians, clinical pharmacists and information technology experts who are
committed to improving outcomes and delivering benefits to doctors, patients,
and payers.  ( http://www.wellinx.com )

    About Affinity Health System and Network Health Plan
    Affinity Health System consists of clinics, hospitals, a long-term care
facility and a health plan serving the health care needs of Northeast
Wisconsin.  Affinity ranked 11th of the top 100 integrated healthcare networks
nationwide in 2003 according to Verispan.  Affinity's Network Health Plan
(NHP) has been providing quality health care services in central Wisconsin for
more than 20 years.  NHP's commitment to high-quality services has resulted in
an "Excellent" rating from the National Committee for Quality Assurance
(NCQA).  ( http://www.affinityhealth.org )

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