Electronic prescribing
It outlines the ability to send error-free, accurate, and understandable prescriptions electronically from the healthcare provider to the pharmacy.
By sharing medical prescription information, e-prescribing seeks to connect the patient's team of healthcare providers to facilitate knowledgeable decision making.
The PBM works as an intermediate actor to ensure the accuracy of information, although other models may not include this to streamline the communication process.
[3] The prescriber searches through the database of patient records by using patient-specific information such as first and last name, date of birth, current address etc.
It stores and maintains a master patient index for quick access to their medical information as well as a list of pharmacies.
The transaction hub then sends this information to the prescriber to improve patient management and care by completing and authorizing the prescription.
[5] Compared to paper-based prescribing, e-prescribing can improve health and reduce costs because it can:[2][6] Safety improvements are highly desirable; in 2000, the Institute of Medicine identified medication errors as the most common type of medical error in health care, estimating that this leads to several thousand deaths each year.
Oral miscommunications regarding prescriptions can be reduced, as e-prescribing should decrease the need for phone calls between prescribers and dispensers.
E-prescribing systems can enhance an overall medication management process through clinical decision support systems that can perform checks against the patient's current medications for drug-drug interactions, drug-allergy interactions, diagnoses, body weight, age, drug appropriateness, and correct dosing.
With limited resource utilization and just a few clicks on behalf of the prescriber, they can complete a medication renewal task while enhancing continuous patient documentation.
Allowing the renewal of medications through this electronic system also helps improve the efficiency of this process, reducing obstacles that may result in less patient compliance.
Improved prescriber convenience can be achieved when using mobile devices, that work on a wireless network, to write and renew prescriptions.
Although e-prescribing has the ability to streamline workflow process and increase the system's efficiency, challenges and limitations that may hinder the widespread adoption of e-prescribing practices include:[2] The vast majority of community medical prescriptions in Australia continue to be delivered on paper, either in printed or hand-written format.
[22] Infoway is working with Health Canada, the provinces and territories and industry stakeholders to create PrescribeIT, a multi-jurisdiction e-prescribing service.
The service will be financially self-sustaining and is designed to be scaled across the country and will enable prescribers to electronically transmit a prescription to a patient's pharmacy of choice.
Because the e-Prescription system draws on data from the national health insurance fund, any state medical subsidies that the patient is entitled to, also appear, and the medicine is discounted accordingly.
Other countries which use the prescription process routinely are Norway, Denmark, Finland, Sweden, Belgium,[29] the Netherlands, Italy,[30] Iceland, Greece, England, Scotland, Wales and Northern Ireland.
The biggest advantage of the system is that a patient has all his medical data stored in the server of state health department which can be referred to in future.
EMIAS is the digital system designed to increase the quality and access of the medical aid in the public health facility.
Government social program allows getting pharmaceutical products for free or with the discount, depending on the category of the citizen.
[33] After successful pilots in London and the East Midlands it was agreed in April 2018 that electronic prescribing should be introduced in all urgent care settings in England, including NHS 111 and other Out-of-hours services so that dispensed medication can be ready for collection at a pharmacy when patients arrive.
[34] £78 million was allocated in December 2018 to encourage progress with implementing electronic prescribing in NHS organisations which were struggling.
[35] Electronic prescribing is to start in English hospitals in the summer of 2022, using the IC24 system which was piloted at Midlands Partnership NHS Foundation Trust from 2020.
[36] In the United States, the HITECH Act promotes adoption of this technology by defining e-prescribing as one meaningful use of an electronic medical record.
[38] Adoption of e-prescribing technology has accelerated in the United States, in large part, due to the arrival of Stage 2 of meaningful use.
[40] A more recent report released by the Office of the National Coordinator for Health IT in June 2012 finds that 48 percent of U.S. physicians use e-prescribing systems.
[41] In 2019, the Federal Trade Commission sued Surescripts, alleging that the company employed unlawful restraints in order to maintain its monopolies over electronic prescribing.
