In the perfect world, policy ideas would be thoroughly tested before public policymakers were called upon to support one idea or another with a large allocation of taxpayer dollars.

But we obviously don’t live in a perfect world, so we often have to settle for testing new ideas and programs after they’ve already been put in motion.

Take e-prescriptions, for example. Over the past couple weeks, a number of states have announced efforts to develop or expand statewide e-prescription programs as an early step toward a more comprehensive implementation of electronic health records.

In Virginia, a group of healthcare executives, pharmacists and other stakeholders has launched an effort to push the commonwealth toward e-prescribing. In Iowa, a public-private collaborative has launched ePrescribe Iowa, a web-based program that will take advantage of Iowa Health System’s HealthNet connect, a 3,200 mile-long fiberoptic network.

Finally, the Vermont Information Technology Leaders Inc. (VITL) recently announced that it will use federal grant funds to try to move Vermont physicians toward greater use of electronic prescriptions.

The move makes sense, as e-prescribing constitutes a relatively simple foray into the world of EHRs. Moreover, in many states, there’s a lot of room for improvement. In Iowa, for example, surveys show that less than 3 percent of all prescriptions written in Iowa in 2008 used e-prescribing. In the policy world, that’s a clear example of low-hanging fruit.

But perhaps the best news of all is that, even as states are jumping onto the e-prescription bandwagon, researchers are launching efforts to determine the effectiveness of e-prescriptions, both in terms of how they can improve patient compliance and how they can lower healthcare costs.

With any luck, state and federal policymakers will be watching this and other similar studies in an effort to improve their programs as they go forward. After all, it’s one thing to come up with an idea and commit the resources to get it moving. It’s another thing altogether to make sure it’s going to work.