E-Prescribing:Top 5 Benefits For Small Practices
Electronic prescribing allows health care providers and other medical professionals to securely transmit prescription information to pharmacies digitally. E-prescribing is growing rapidly, not just because the technology has improved, but because of the substantial benefits for patients and health care providers.
E-prescribing offers many benefits for all involved from the prescriber in the patient room to the pharmacy employee who hands the patient the prescription. Here are the top 5 benefits of e-prescribing for small practices.
1. Reduce Pharmacist Error
Compared to hand-written prescriptions, e-prescriptions are extremely clear in terms of treatment and dosage and require less interpretation on the part of the pharmacist. This can reduce prescription and medication errors. It also can help ensure patients have the most accurate information possible about how a particular drug should be taken.
E-prescriptions can reduce the risk of an incorrect dose, which can easily waste time or even cause harm to a patient in a worst-case scenario. One meta-study found that when practices implemented an e-prescribing system, medication error could be reduced to one-seventh its original levels.
2. Clinical Support For Providers
E-prescribing gives health care providers full visibility into all of a patient’s documented allergies and previously prescribed drugs and will trigger clinical alerts if a newly prescribed drug has any potential for negative reactions. Alerts in the system will notify the prescriber of allergies, interactions with other drugs the patient is taking, duplicate therapy, as well as pediatric, pregnancy, and geriatric issues that would preclude a patient from taking a particular drug.
3. Enhanced Security
Electronic prescribing is significantly more secure than paper prescriptions. Paper prescriptions are subject to transcription errors and are targets for theft and tampering, making it relatively easy for drug-seeking patients to alter prescriptions by increasing dosage, quantity prescribed, or several refills of medications. E-prescriptions are also delivered directly to the pharmacy, without exposing the physician’s DEA number to the patient. The consequences of DEA number theft can include physician identity theft and temporary inability to E-prescribe controlled substances among other issues.
4. Improved Patient Safety
E-prescribing is intended to replace writing out, faxing, or calling in prescriptions and the most significant advance is the improvement to the safety and quality of patient care. Avoidable errors associated with handwritten prescriptions can include a selection of an incorrect or unavailable drug or dosage, duplication of therapy, omission of information, and misinterpretation of the order due to illegible handwriting.
Illegible prescription orders result in millions of calls between pharmacists and providers each year which can ultimately delay patient care. Also, not all mistakes are detected and could potentially result in patient harm.
5. Reduce Readmissions
Every year, there are more than 1.6 million hospital re-admissions, and more than 13 percent of them are caused in part by adverse reactions to drugs. Of these, 95 percent were due to inappropriate prescription practices — including failure to consider potential side effects and interactions.
When integrated with records systems that provide access to information about a patient's allergies and drug history, e-prescription systems can reduce errors. They also can give clinicians better information about potential interactions and side effects that they can use to inform their prescription practices. Clinicians that work with e-prescription systems can expect to reduce patient readmissions, saving both doctors and patients time and money.
Final Thoughts
As the healthcare industry started progressing towards advanced technologies for simplifying administrative works, physicians should also need to consider utilizing the best EHR software with advanced e-prescribing features for better patient satisfaction and improved clinical workflow.
Vozo E-Prescribing allows you to electronically send an accurate and error-free, prescription directly to a pharmacy while ensuring 100% safety.
