Preventable medical mistakes cause approximately 200,000 deaths around the United States each year. (1) More than 1,000,000 Americans are negatively impacted by medication errors each year caused by inadvertent mistakes in the prescription filling process. With 4 out of 5 adults taking at least 1 medication daily and 1 out of 4 adults taking 5 or more medications daily nationwide, errors like these cost healthcare industry billions of dollars per year. Health information technology were developed to transform healthcare services, the way they are provided and compensated. Electronic prescribing (e-prescribing) becomes an internal part of that transformation process, which can be confirmed from annual Surescripts’ National Progress Report. …show more content…
For starters, clinicians and pharmacists must have their e-prescribing software upgraded to meet standards set by the federal Drug Enforcement Administration. This means contacting their software vendor. Many vendors will perform the upgrade at no cost although others charge for it. So far, only 4% of e-prescribers have had their software …show more content…
For example, Tennessee Exit Disclaimer initiated a partnership with the Tennessee Pharmacists Association to provide up to $675,000 in grants to 124 independent, community pharmacies to offset e-prescribing expenses. (4) Unsettled standards. Nationwide network still misses essential rules and standards for e-prescription messages and their validation, drug terminology and classification, application forms, medication lists and many other meeting points among physicians, pharmacies (both chain and independent) and providers. Uneducated clinicians and low PMP integration. 72% of primary care physicians are aware of their state’s PMP (prescription monitoring program), but only 53% of them use it due to time-consuming nature of information retrieval and the lack of an intuitive format for data provided by the programs. State government should consider an implementation of legal mandates, as well as investing in prescriber education, and taking measures to enhance ease of access to and use of the programs.
Electronic physician order is beneficial because it provides a legible and complete order that includes
Micromedex is one of the electronic sources that will help me in prescribing medications. Micromedex medication instructions deliver a single source of evidence- based patient education materials. It provides customized medication information, easily understood by any patient, including indications, contraindications, usage instructions, precautions, interactions, storage, disposal and side effects for both prescription and non prescription drugs. This source provides health care personnel to benefit from the ability to quickly share information directly in the workflow, throughout the continuum of care.
MTM is used to describe the broad range of health care services provided by pharmacists. These services include comprehensive medication reviews, medication reconciliation, drug use review, the ordering and review of lab tests, immunizations, drug dosage adjustments, and identification of gaps in care. Integrated systems of care, such as accountable care organizations (ACOs), already view MTM as essential to care delivery and to meeting ACO quality and cost targets. Such organizations also are heavily invested in HIT, including e-prescribing and EHRs. MTM can improve medication adherence and patient outcomes among patients suffering from chronic diseases, thus cutting costs and improving the quality of care and patient
If the medications get to the doctor and delivers it to the patients, how will the patients know if that prescription is good enough for them to take? Just because getting free lunches in exchange for the
Physicians in the US are given the autonomy to prescribe to patients without restriction of drug indication as long as the prescribe drug is given to the patient to help with their ailment in good faith. Physicians give the prescription to the patient to get filled in the pharmacy. The retail pharmacist does not have instant access to their medical records to verify the indication. The pharmacist can verify the drug and the intent of the phycisian. Once confirmed, the pharmacist can fill the prescription regardless of efficacy of the drug on the patient.
Starting in 2009, in the result of the HITECH Act, institutions were rewarded financially for implementing these electronic health record systems into their practices, with more than $35 billion invested. According toWithin a few years, the rates of Medicare or Medicaid EHR adoption increased dramatically for physicians and hospitals. From 2010 to 2012, hospital EHR implementation rates grew to 44%, while physician EHR implementation rose from 20% to 40%, and those rates should keep rising (Cite One). The Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act is mainly looked at for reduction in health disparities. One tactic being used to fight these health disparities is researching demographic data and applying this data to electronic health records.
CPOE cuts down the medication error associated with sound alike drugs especially when they are written by physician with cursive handwriting also medical error associated with ordering wrong medication The benefits of these computerized order-entry systems range from very legible orders, completeness of orders, to alerts of possible contraindications based on patient information like allergy apply logic-based rules to patient information to prevent medication errors and adverse drug events Standardization of care Cpoe provides physician with order set for a particular diagnosis or a therapy helping physicians to practice recognized best practices standardization of care reduces the complexity of practicing medicine and reduces potential errors. Improved efficiency of care delivery. Cope helped move the information moved instantly across the organization reducing the time for delivering care it processed efficiency and also saved cost and improved quality of care the physicians were able to place orders from their office and the care was rendered to the patients at the
In the modern society, the use of medication has become an issue of major concern for many individual and groups in world because the medication-taking behavior is extremely complex because it involves patient, physician, and process components. Therefore, for individual to improve compliance, requiring numerous multifactorial strategies (Brown and Bussell, 2011).
“Some functionalities of a CDS system include providing the latest information about a drug, cross-referencing a patient allergy to a medication, and alerts for drug interactions and other potential patient issues that are flagged by the computer” (Menachemi & Collum, 2011). These systems utilize built-in templates, based on evidence-based practice, to cue providers on recommended test for diagnosis or provide a reminder of the patient’s needs for medications or immunizations. This system leads to improved accuracy during documentation, through enhanced quality of care and patient safety, resulting in better clinical
One of the issues that rises with the replacement of hand written prescription to a modern electronic health care system is, how readily acceptable clinicians are to actually use and make most of electronic health records (Report of the Auditor General of Canada, 2010). This means health care providers must manually enter data such as specific medications, which can be a bit time consuming and ultimately, inefficient in several cases. However, if health care givers do not enter information electronically than the computer will have no access to this clinical data to practice clinical logic. Therefore, this issue can lead EHR to end up being unbeneficial to the health care system, and to Canadian patients most of all, as the electronic aspect
A quick glance at the principals behind the Pharmacy Automated Kiosk option broadly gives three key takeaways. Firstly, recognizing the role of pharmacists to help ensure that medication therapy is safe, effective, equitable, patient-centered, and results in quality outcomes; Secondly ensuring that all Americans have timely access to prescription medications that are provided accurately and efficiently; and last but not the least expanding the use of health information technology to support full integration of pharmacists as part of the health care delivery
Pharma Websites and “Professionals-Only” Information: The Implications for Patient Trust and Autonomy “This article was written by Mark Alan Graber, MSHCE, MD. Dr. Graber lives in Iowa City, IA. In this article about prescription drugs and their benefits and side effects. Graber discusses how physicians for get to tell their patients about their drugs.
DUE programs play a important role in helping managed health care systems to understand, interpret, review and improve the pattern of prescribing, administration and usage of medications. Employers and health plans find DUE programs effective since the outcomes are used to foster more effective use of scarce health care resources. Pharmacists play a important role in this process because of their skill in the area of drug therapy management. DUE affords the managed care pharmacist the chance to identify trends in prescribing within community of patients whether by pathological-state such as those with asthma, diabetes or high blood pressure, or by medication-specific criteria. Pharmacists can then, in association with prescribers and other members of the health care team, start the action to improve medication therapy for patients.
However, it is important that patients check that the pharmacy they use is registered and able to legally sell medications before purchasing online. Response of the Pharmaceutical Industry Counterfeit medications are also a significant problem for pharmaceutical industries that profit from the sale of genuine medications. It is in their interest, and in the interest of the public health, to reduce the rates of counterfeit medications and ensure that the public has access to medications that have been tested for safety and efficacy. As a result, pharmaceutical manufacturers and distributors have been investing into certain measures to reduce the impact of counterfeit medications.
Health care is growing increasingly complex, and most clinical research focuses on new approaches to diagnosis and treatment (Bates and Gawande, 2003). An electronic health record (EHR) is a digital version of a patient’s paper chart. EHRs are real-time, patient-centeredrecords that make information available instantly and securely to authorized users. While an EHR does contain the medical and treatment histories of patients, an EHR system is built to go beyond standard clinical data collected in a provider’s office and can be inclusive of a broader view of a patient’s care. The electronic health record (EHR) is a documentation tool that yields data useful in enhancing patient safety, evaluating care quality, maximizing efficiency, and determining