Electronic Prescribing Essay

535 Words2 Pages

Electronic prescribing is not brand new but it is fairly new and constantly evolving technology that is designed to reduce the risk for sentinel events associated with medications in patients. Electronic prescribing is currently not being utilized by every provider. With all of the benefits, we might wonder what would prevent a provider from utilizing this technology. Not all providers are as excited about implementing e-scribe systems as others. A major barrier reported by a large number of primary care physicians is lack of financial support. As with any type of new technology or implementation of a new device, there will be some initial costs for installation, training and then for upkeep. Many small practices simply do not have the funds to foot the bill to purchase, install and then train there staff on the new software. Without proper design, set up and training new types of errors can occur with an electronic prescription service. If the system is not set up correctly, the practitioner may get an excess amount of alerts which may lead to a time when they simply overlook the alerts and may miss an important alert. When alerts start getting ignored a …show more content…

Older physicians may prefer to continue to hand write prescriptions because they do not want to invest in the software to do electronic prescriptions and many simply do not like change. There is a decreased amount of interaction and clarification that the pharmacy has to have with the clinic due to illegible handwriting; thus reducing the time it takes to fill the prescription and get it to the patient (Velo & Minuz, 2009). The software will have checks and balances that will make sure that the prescribed medications do not have interactions with other medication that the patient doesn’t have an allergy and will give practitioners the ability to check for cheaper generic drugs that may be on the formulary to save the patient and the insurance

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