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Posted in: Socio-Economic evaluation
Effective July 1, 2010, the Ontario government has fixed the price of generic medicines at 25% of the price of the equivalent brand name drug. In addition, approximately $800 million a year currently paid by generic drug companies to pharmacies in rebates will be banned. As Ontario struggles to contain the costs of health care, it seems that arbitrary price controls are not the answer. The system needs a overhaul.
There is very little evidence on which to base EHR implementation investment decisions. Fortunately, that is changing. Findings from the recently released EHR Impact study: The Socio-Economic Impact of Interoperable Electronic Health Record (EHR) and Eprescribing Systems in Europe and Beyond, show that EHRs and ePrescribing are not quick wins, but they are sustainable wins. An important finding was that interoperability is a prime driver of benefits from EHR and ePrescribing systems as benefits rely on access to information regardless of place and time. Local, closed ICT systems lacking interoperability would not release these substantial gains. Extremely important to success of such investments, also, is the skill and expertise of executives and managers in managing organisational change and resource redeployment.