Helping Patients With E-Prescribing
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With the objective of improving the quality of patient care, sending a prescription electronically directly from the point-of-care to a pharmacy in an understandable, accurate and error-free form is the called E-Prescribing.
The Medicare Modernization Act (MMA) of 2003 included electronic prescribing which boosted its development. Later in a report in July 2006, the Institute of Medicine stressed the importance of e-prescribing in reducing medication errors. This got widespread publicity, and built awareness of e-prescribing in the masses for its role in patient safety.
In the United States, the government plans to standardize and facilitate e-prescribing to build a national electronic health information infrastructure.
FUNCTIONS OF AN E-PRESCRIBING SYSTEM
An e-prescribing system should perform the following functions:
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Generate a comprehensive medication list, which incorporates the data from applicable drug plans, if available.
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Select medication, print prescription, electronically transmit a prescription, conduct safety checks using integrated decision support system (such as information on drug, inappropriate dose or route of administration, interactions with other drugs, allergy or other warnings and remarks).
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Fetch information of medication or product at a lower cost, or any available therapeutically appropriate alternative
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Get information on tiered formulary medications, eligibility of patient and the authorization requirement of drug plan.
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Review medication history information and current medication list of a patient.
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Patient-specific information (e.g., patient identification, patient education, patient historical data, patient medication list).
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Operate upon a medication within practice. It may involve viewing medication details, remove or renew a medication if required, change the dosage etc.
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Add or prescribe new medication.
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Select the pharmacy where the prescription will be expedited.
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Update information to the Transaction Hub, from where patient information is sent back to the prescriber.
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Technical integration capabilities (e.g., connect to different databases, connect with pharmacy and pharmacy benefit manager systems).
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