E-Prescribing: Study Finds Pitfalls and Promises

Electronic prescribing has long been seen as a way to speed up and increase accuracy in the delivery of medication. But a new study shows that both physician practices and pharmacies face barriers to “realizing the technology's full benefit,” according to a press release by the U.S. Department of Health and Human Services' (HHS) Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ), which funded the study.

The study was published online in November in the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association.

Certainly, electronic prescribing, or e-prescribing, has multiple potential benefits, according to the press release. These include helping to reduce the risk of medication errors caused by illegible or incomplete handwritten prescriptions, of which physicians have long been accused.

The study focused on the “electronic exchange of prescription data between physician practices and pharmacies, which can save time and money by streamlining the way in which new prescriptions and renewals are processed,” according to the press release.

Physician practices and pharmacies generally like the electronic transmission of new prescriptions, the study found. But there still are problems yet to be solved -- prescription renewals, connectivity between physician offices and mail-order pharmacies and manual entry of certain prescription information by pharmacists—particularly drug name, dosage form, quantity, and patient instructions, the press release reports.

"Physicians and pharmacies have come a long way in their use of e-prescribing, and that's a very positive trend for safer patient care and improved efficiency," AHRQ Director Carolyn M. Clancy, M.D., said in the press release. "This study identifies issues that need attention to improve e-prescribing for physicians, pharmacies, and patients."

Filling new prescriptions was the most well-liked part of e-prescribing, the study found. Interestingly, electronic renewals were least likely to be used by physician practices and pharmacies.  And more than a quarter of the community pharmacies surveyed said that they did not send electronic renewal requests to physicians. Good thing – the study found that one-third of physician practices had e-prescribing systems that were not set up to receive electronic renewals or only received them infrequently, according to the press release.

And there are bigger problems. Writes FierceHealthITThe AHRQ study predicts that resolving e-prescribing challenges will become more pressing as increasing numbers of physicians adopt the technology in response to federal incentives. “Physicians can qualify for Medicare and Medicaid electronic health record incentive payments by generating and transmitting more than 40 percent of all prescriptions to pharmacies electronically, excluding prescriptions for controlled substances, as part of the HITECH Act of 2009,” the press release states. editor Ken Terry, “Many doctors find electronic prescribing systems to have incomplete data and limited usefulness.” Terry reports that, according to a recent study, “while most doctors had access to formulary data, only about half could access medication histories.” And the histories that were available weren’t presented in a way that doctors could quickly use them, defeating the very point of e-prescribing, he notes.

Want to learn more about the latest in communications and technology? Then be sure to attend ITEXPO East 2012, taking place Jan. 31-Feb. 3 2012, in Miami, FL. ITEXPO offers an educational program to help corporate decision makers select the right IP-based voice, video, fax and unified communications solutions to improve their operations. It's also where service providers learn how to profitably roll out the services their subscribers are clamoring for – and where resellers can learn about new growth opportunities. To register, click here.

Stay in touch with everything happening at ITEXPO. Follow us on Twitter.