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Saturday, July 15, 2006Here is the State Board of Pharmacy's definition of an "electronic prescription transmission system": Electronic prescription transmission systems allow prescriptions to be sent electronically from a prescriber to a pharmacy. The prescriber can send the prescription directly from his/her computer to a pharmacy computer or facsimile machine. Some of the systems are office-based, some are web-based, and some use a switching station to route the prescription to the pharmacy. The office-based systems allow the prescriber to send a prescription electronically directly from his/her office to the pharmacy. Does that mean a fax machine has to be approved by the pharmacy board before it can be used to fax a prescription? Sure sounds like it, if it communicates in anyway with the computer generating the prescription. So, what if a physician has a printer that's also a fax. Would his software program have to be approved if he printed his prescription out on paper, then turned around and put the paper right back in the fax machine and manually faxed it? Or would it only have to be approved if he skipped the printing and manual entry of the fax number and just had the printer fax it instead? I may be wrong, but I read the rule to mean that you can not fax a printed prescription unless it was written on a typewriter. Computers are scary. Hackers can do all sorts of bad things with them, like creating their own prescriptions. These rules ostensibly make things more secure, but there is a much more commonly used method of electronic transmission of a prescription. It's used every day in every physician office, and even from physician homes and cars. Just about every patient has one, too, or at least easy access to one. It's been in use for over a hundred years. It's the telephone, and anyone can call any pharmacy and claim to be a doctor or a doctor's representative and give themselves a prescription for just about anything. There is absolutely no authentication at the point of use. They just take your word for it. But, oddly, there aren't any rules about telephones. Go figure. posted by Sydney on 7/15/2006 11:23:00 PM 0 comments 0 Comments: |
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