The Benefits Of E-prescribing Software

By Author: Rachel Campbell
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Overview of E-Prescribing

Problems With Paper Prescriptions

The atrocity of a doctor's handwriting has been a running joke for years. Some people, though, may not find it all that funny. Roughly 7,000 deaths a year occur in the United States alone due to medication errors. Most of these could have been prevented. Illegible handwriting, missed drug interactions, missed allergies, and wrong dosage are the reasons for most of them. Someone dies, because their doctor has bad handwriting. It's not so funny when you think about it that way.

Prescribing the wrong dose for a medication is also a common mistake made during the writing of prescriptions. Some of these mistakes can prove to be fatal. There are certain warning systems available when a doctor e-prescribes a medication to catch these errors.

Many times, the problem with prescriptions isn't the doctors fault at all. It is estimated that almost 20% of all paper prescriptions never even make it to the pharmacy. Often it is lost or forgotten about by the patient. Electronic prescribing eliminates these problems. Instead of passing from the doctor to ...
... the patient to the pharmacy, it goes directly to the pharmacy from the doctor in an instant.

What Is e-Prescribing?

Electronic prescribing - or e-prescribing - sends prescriptions to the pharmacy immediately. This is done over a secure connection and can be sent from either a computer or a handheld device.

The software needed allows a doctor to select the correct medication from a list. It then gives recommended dosage options, pricing, and generic options. Any problems with a prescription are usually caught early, before the prescription even makes it to the pharmacy. Some errors still occur, of course, but one study shows that these errors have drastically reduced in number when e-prescribing instead of writing the prescription by hand.

Benefits of e-Prescribing

Patient safety is the biggest advantage when it comes to e-prescribing a medication and writing one by hand. Instead of illegible "doctor's handwriting," a pharmacist is able to read the information off of a computer screen, and mistakes or misunderstandings are less likely to occur.

With handwritten prescriptions, the waiting time at the pharmacy can be unreal at times. Sometimes, the pharmacists are simply backed up. Most of the time though, the wait is due to the phone calls that had to be made back to the doctor's offices to clear up any misunderstandings with the prescriptions. Refill requests can be also be completed immediately when the pharmacist sends the request to the prescribing doctor. The doctor can then either accept or deny the request.

Costs of certain medications can now be checked instantly with e-prescribing software. A doctor can instantly search for a lower cost medication when prescribing, if a patients situation warrants it.

Also, many of the e-prescribing software available allows a doctor to upload the patients medical history. Because of this, there is a less likely chance that a patient will get a medication that could be dangerous or potentially fatal. Warning and alerts systems to catch drug interactions and allergies are in place to catch these errors.

SureScripts

SureScripts is the leading e-prescribing network and is a clearinghouse for electronic prescribing data which links to thousands of different pharmacies across the nation. This allows both providers and pharmacies to develop fast and safe e-prescribing software. They are also constantly working outside the network to research, educate, and inform. They are always working with various agencies to make sure that the process of e-prescribing is safe and secure.
About Author:
DoseSpot (http://www.dosespot.com) provides electronic prescribing for electronic medical record companies and practice management software companies. These organizations can use DoseSpot for easy to use e-prescribing, so that they become certified for meaningful use much faster than otherwise possible.