What are the benefits of E-prescribing and how does it improve quality care?

Published Date : 2017-07-19

A technology framework which doctors, Physicians and all healthcare practitioners write and send electronically to a partaking pharmacy instead of faxed or handwritten notes or calling in prescriptions is known as E-prescribing or electronic prescribing. The e-prescribing systems acts as a reference book in the electronic medium at basic levels.  Other e-prescribing systems act as stand-alone writers whichare more sophisticated. Imperative functions such as managing medications and viewing patient history, connecting to a pharmacy or other drug dispensing site, refilling prescriptions for individual patients and integrating with and electronic medical record (EMR) systems are performed by the E-prescribing system.

The US government’s Electronic Prescribing Incentive Program requires the use of a qualified E-prescribing system as it provides a medical practice up to a 2% remuneration of its Medicare Part B charges. Along with other functionalities, warning prescribers about probable allergic reactions and acquaint physicians about generic alternative and transmitting prescriptions electronically are said to be primary functions of a qualified E-prescribing system. The number of prescription errors are decreased that occur due to illegible faxes or bad handwriting.

Benefits

following are few points as why E-prescribing can improve health and reduce costs compared to paper-based prescribing:

• Medication compliance is reduced by minimizing patients cost and reducing lost and unfilled prescriptions.
• More adverse drug interactions and reactions are avoided.
• Dispensing and prescribing errors are reduced.
• The work required in execution of a prescription is reduced.
• Speed receipt of prescribed drugs and accuracy.
• The insurance provider in the doctor’s office can be checked formulary for less expensive alternatives that are a more reliable offer.
• Diminish the prevalence of drug abuse by altering duplicative prescriptions of providers and pharmacist.

Medication errors were identified as the most common type of error in the health by the Institute of Medicine in the year of 2000, which estimated that it leads to several deaths per year. Safety enhancements are eminently desirable. 

Improving Quality of care

Errors occurred due to prescriptions that are hand written are eradicated also decreasing risks related to reliability at the same time. E-prescribing system enhances medication management process which is overall through support systems that check a patient’s body weight, age, correct dosing, diagnoses, drug allergy reactions, drug appropriateness, and also checks against the patient’s current medications for drug-drug interactions. The system also ensures that instructions are forwarded to the pharmacists in messages that are structured clearly and unambiguously, and any combination of drugs or dosages that are lethal are flagged by the decision support system. E-prescribing significantly shuns the volume of call-backs in pharmacies that are associated with mistaken prescriptions choices and illegibility that ultimately has a positive impact on the workflow efficiency and overall productivity.