CONCORD, N.H. (AP) – The chicken scribble that passes for doctors’ writing could become a thing of the past. Gov. John Lynch and a group of health-care workers are pushing for New Hampshire to become the first state in the nation where all of its health care providers are able to prescribe medication electronically.

The plan calls for all primary care providers to have the ability to prescribe prescriptions electronically by October 2007. Health-care clinicians would have until October 2008.

E-prescribing can be done with something as simple as a Blackberry.

Lynch said the action would “improve health-care quality and help save lives, while at the same time reducing health-care costs and improving the efficiency of our health-care system.”

Lynch and members of the Citizens Health Initiative point to a study done in July, in which the Institute of Medicine estimated that problems with the prescription drug system – uncertainty about what the doctor prescribed, an inappropriate medication for the patient, wrong dosages or just the wrong drug – cost the health care system $77 billion a year nationally.

The Institute of Medicine estimates that 7,000 patients nationally – or up to 30 per capita in New Hampshire – die each year as the result of adverse drug reactions. And 1.4 percent of hospital admissions every year are the result of adverse drug reactions. That equates to up to 1,700 hospital admissions in New Hampshire – at an average cost of $10,000 per patient.