E-PRESCRIBING & E-DISCHARGE SYSTEM

 INTRODUCTION TO E-PRESCRIBING & E-DISCHARGE SYSTEM

Link for explaination video of this topic 👇👇👇

https://youtu.be/yMYDbArvEZM

INTRODUCTION TO E-PRESCRIBING SYSTEM

A medical prescription is given by a physician or other qualified health care practitioner generally to purchase a prescribed drug from a pharmacist. But in recent times, computer based medical prescriptions also known as Electronic prescriptions or e-prescriptions (e-Rx) are being used.

E-prescription allows a physician, pharmacist, nurse or physician's assistant to electronically transmit a new prescription or renewal authorization of a prescription to a community pharmacy or mail order pharmacy.

DEFINATION

Defination: E-prescription is a technology or framework that allows physicians and other medical practitioners to write and send prescription to a participating pharmacies electronically instead of handwritten or faxed notes or calling-in prescriptions.

OBJECTIVES OF E-PRESCRIBING SYSTEM

An ideal e-prescribing system must be capable of:

• Patient identification
• Generating a complete active medication list.
• Access to patient historical data. 
• Prescribe or add new medication & select the pharmacy where the prescription will be filled.
• View details of medication, remove a medicine from active medication list, change dose etc.
• Printing prescription.
• Electronically transmit prescription to a pharmacy.
• Showing availability of lower cost, therapeutically similar alternatives (if any).

ADVANTAGES

1. Reduce prescribing and dispensing errors.

2. Decrease the work needed to execute a prescription.

3. Speed receipt of prescribed drugs.

4. Avoid more adverse drug interactions & reactions.

5. Reduce the incidence of drug abuse by dublication of prescription.

DISADVANTAGES

1. Software design issues: The design features of e-prescribing system may increase the likelihood of errors due to poor screen design or automatic filling function etc., which can effect patient's safety. Due to default in software or network error, delay in the arrival of e-prescription can result in patient discontent & increase waiting time as patient may arrive at the pharmacy before an order has been received.
2. Cost disadvantages: Often limitation of e prescribing system includes cost association with its use like start-up cost, maintenance cost & expenses on transaction of e-prescription to the chain pharmacy can be negotiated by large chain pharmacy but not affordable by smaller chain pharmacies. They have to pay more to utilize e-prescribing system.
3. Clarification of inaccuracies: One of the benefits of e-prescribing system can also result in additional time taking for the pharmacist to process an e-prescription if inaccuracies exist. A study comparing traditional prescription with e prescription found that e-prescriptions requires more pharmacist interaction with the provider because of missing or inaccurate or unclear information. Verification of inaccurate doses was also common. The study has also found violation of legal requirements & excessive quantity or duration of medication. These findings suggest that the continued need for pharmacist to intervene on e-prescription, which leads to increased dispensing time.

INTRODUCTION & DEFINATION OF E-DISCHARGE SYSTEM

Paper based discharge system are often found illegal, incomplete or received too late for the information to be considered clinically useful.

But electronic discharge system can address known deficiencies and improve the continuation of care, communication & accuracy of data in discharge summary. EDS system eliminates possible source of error that may result when scanning or faxing paper based discharge summaries.

Risk of patient safety occurs on discharge from hospital, when vital information is not transferred quickly to the doctors and to the patients.

Defination: So, the e-discharge summary system is a way that enables hospitals to safely transfer the information using coded data which is transferred also to the doctor's IT system when a patient is discharged from hospital care which ensures all the relevant information on diagnosis, medications & allergies about the patient is shared with general doctor in order to improve the quality & consistency of care.