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medpundit |
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Tuesday, February 15, 2005Electronic prescribing, or 'e-prescribing,' enables a physician to transmit a prescription electronically to the patient's choice of pharmacy. It also enables physicians and pharmacies to obtain from drug plans information about the patient's eligibility and medication history. Having access to this information at the point of care makes writing, filling and receiving prescriptions quicker and easier, and it also makes it possible for physicians and pharmacies to make informed decisions about appropriate and lower-cost therapeutically-equivalent alternative medications. E-prescribing can improve patient safety and reduce avoidable health care costs by decreasing prescription errors due to hard-to-read physician handwriting and by automating the process of checking for drug interactions and allergies. E-prescribing can also help make sure that patients and health professionals have the best and latest medical information at hand when they make important decisions about choosing medicines, and enabling beneficiaries to get the most benefits at the lowest cost. Most pharmacies already communicate with patients' health insurance plans to make sure the drug they're dispensing is covered. But most doctors don't send the prescription in electronically. Would that reduce errors? I suppose that's why they want to establish standards: Standards for communicating and interpreting health data are essential for obtaining greater benefits of e-prescribing. The current lack of common standards is a barrier to the use of health information technology, including e-prescribing. Adoption of e-prescribing standards by Medicare is expected to spur the use of e-prescribing throughout the nation's health care system. It would be nice to be able to submit prescriptions directly to the pharmacy via the internet. As the standard makers point out, those prescriptions account for an awful lot of phone traffic jams in doctors' offices and pharmacies: Dispensers also must frequently call the prescriber to obtain approval for refills or renewals where they are not specified on the prescription or when they have run out. According to some estimates, almost 30 percent of the 3 billion prescriptions written annually [1] require dispenser calls. [2] This equals 900 million prescription-related telephone calls annually. Actually, I'm not sure how much of those phone calls would be eliminated by an electronic system. Most of my annoying refill requests are generated by patients who are either trying to slide by without their six-month chronic illness check or who don't bother to check the refills on their bottles for some reason. At any rate, the government is accepting comments on their proposed rules here. posted by Sydney on 2/15/2005 07:35:00 PM 1 comments 1 Comments:
Hey, i like your blog, it's good. Any others? I have two myself. You've got some good ideas here, keep it up! |
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