KPLC 7 News, Lake Charles, Louisiana |Changing Louisiana's Health Care Options
Reported By: Lee Peck
Looking to buy a new car, you'll likely turn to the Internet to compare prices, performance and models. And soon for the first time Louisiana residents could have that capability when shopping for health care.
"We as patients should have access to the same outcomes, pricing and other information when it comes to healthcare that we can currently get when we want to go buy a car, go to a restaurant, or other goods and services," said Governor Bobby Jindal.
A proposed bill authored by Senator Willie Mount would employ the Department of Health and Hospitals to collect health care data and create a web site providing the appropriate healthcare costs, quality and performance of hospitals and physicians -- including mortality rates.
Putting his support behind the historic legislation in Lake Charles Wednesday afternoon, Governor Jindal spoke to the group not as the state's leader, but as the father of a son with a rare heart condition.
"Before we decided which hospital to go to it would have been nice if we could have gone online, and figured out which doctors have the best outcomes. We could have gone on and found out what the different price levels were. Too often that information is not available," said Jindal.
The bill goes before the lawmakers in the upcoming regular legislative session, which begins March 31st.
"65% of the Medicaid recipients in the state of Louisiana received a prescription last year, 750,000 patients cost about 500 million dollars in the last fiscal year," explained DHH Secretary Alan Levine.
To cut those costs for taxpayers, Levine explains the state's new e-prescribing system. It works through a PDA device. Linked to the states Medicaid Preferred Drug List, doctors can prescribe the most effective and cost-efficient drugs for Medicaid patients.
"It enables the doctor at that moment to make the decision which they might based on the data give the wrong medication, this way they can prescribe the right medication. It also prevents doctor shopping, people who might be addicted to pain medications," said Levine.
Lake Charles pediatrician Jennette Bergstedt is the first doctor in the state to use the new technology and says she likes the fact it stores the last 100 days of the patients' medication history.
"It seems to be really wonderful. I can pull up all my patients and look at what prescriptions they've had recently and if there's any drug interactions, if there's allergies," Dr. Bergstedt.
At the click of a button, the device takes the paperwork and chance for misinterpretation out of the equation. "Lets make it automatic. So when they write your prescription they can automatically electronically send it to the pharmacy. There's no paper, no potential for a handwriting mistake, and that way the pharmacist can make sure that patients are getting the drugs they need," said Governor Jindal.
DHH is spending $1.2 million to give the state's top 500 Medicaid providers these new PDA's, that's roughly $2,350 per PDA. While the "e-prescribing" targets Medicaid patients, doctors do have the ability to enter privately insured patients into the database.
