More US doctors moving to e-prescriptions

US doctors increasingly are ditching pen and paper and sending prescriptions to pharmacies electronically, lured by up to $27 billion in government funds aimed at speeding the switch to electronic medical records. There are now 200,000 doctors who use e-prescribing, or roughly one in three office-based doctors. That compares with 156,000 at the end of last year, and 74,000 at the end of 2008, according to new data released by Surescripts, which operates the largest U.S. electronic prescribing network. They said 47 states more than doubled their use of electronic prescribing last year.