Advantages and Disadvantages of
E-Prescription
Student’s Name
Institutional Affiliation
Advantages and Disadvantages of
E-Prescription
The last decade saw the evolution of
electronic prescription which is referred to as E-prescription in the field of
medicine. It was introduced in 2003 when Medicare Modernization Act (MMA) was
approved by the Congress. The Act provided a formal definition of
E-prescription but did not require all healthcare providers to adopt. Moreover,
it did provide uniform standards for appropriate implementation and use in the
health care institutions. Most healthcare providers in the United States have
integrated e-prescribing into their systems, and they have e-prescription
routing capabilities. In the modern health care systems, the major concerns are
how to increase patient safety and reduce prescription errors. E-prescription
has demonstrated that it can provide a solution to these issues. Initially,
E-prescription presented several challenges which saw some resistance from
medical practitioners. However, most of these challenges have been resolved,
thanks to technological advancements. These improvements have led to accuracy
in dosing and allergy detection in patients. Although E-prescription provides
several benefits to the medical field, still problems are present. The
objective of this essay is to explain the advantages and disadvantages of
E-prescription in the medical field.
Advantages
The proved advantages E-prescription
include drug costs reduction, improved patient safety, and enhanced access to
patient prescription records and high quality of pharmacy workflow.
Improved
patient safety
In the United States, approximately 1.7
million adverse drug events (ADE) are recorded every year, and they are
believed to account for almost $4 million of government's spending in
healthcare. Some of the problems that may arise due to manual prescription
include; omission of important information, therapy duplication,
misinterpretation of the information due to illegible handwriting, and wrong
dosage. If these errors are identified before the patient get the medicines,
patient care will be delayed due to additional communication between the
provider of the prescription to address the identified errors (Ginzburg, Barr,
Harris, & Munshi, 2009). However, not all mistakes in the prescription are
identified, and this may lead to patient harm or death.
If allergies cannot be identified during
the prescription process, they may add to ADEs (adverse drug events).
E-prescription software is programmed in a way that they notify the provider
with any prescription errors before the data is being transmitted. This ensures
that right information is being used in the prescription to avoid any harm to
the patient.
Drug
cost reductions
Some of the errors identified in manual
prescriptions are the duplication of therapy and wrong medications or dosage.
The provider may overdose the patient making him spend more on the drugs. E-prescription
ensures that no duplication and the right dosage is given. The process also
allows the providers not to prescribe medicines that may cause allergies and
instead it identifies cost-effective therapies.
Enhanced
access to prescription records
E-prescription is important,
particularly when the safety of patients is threatened especially in cases of
drug recalls. Additionally, it comes in handy during cases of natural disasters
that may destroy manual records. Patient care will continue since the providers
can retrieve patient records from e-prescription network that covers almost 95%
of the United States of America (Shawana, et la., 2009). In cases of drug
recalls, pharmacists can trace medication information to individual patients
and deliver this valuable information.
Patient
convenience
The system ensures that the medication
for patients is ready by the time they arrive at the pharmacist. All the
checking between the pharmacist and physician will have been completed in
advance reducing any hurdles for the patients. This means there is adherence to
medication since there will be no delay for patients to access the previous
drugs (Barber, 2010).
Enhanced
security
Electronic prescription is more secure
than written prescriptions. Paper orders are vulnerable to transcription errors
and prone to theft and tampering, making it easy for drug-seeking people easy
to alter them to increase the dosage or number of refills (Barber, 2010).
E-prescriptions are directly delivered to the pharmacist even without patients
getting to know the physician's name. Exposure of the Physician's DEA (Drug
Enforcement Administration) increases identity theft chances or even damaged
the reputation of the doctor. Consequently, it is not easy to leak patient's
information (Brushwood, 2003).
Enhanced
workflow
Much attention has been given to how
e-prescription benefits the patients by preventing medication errors. Moreover,
the health care providers also gain much from this technology. Calls to
providers from other users of the prescription information have been eliminated
providing more time for patient counseling. It (Electronic Prescription) has
also enhanced workflow between the junior medical practitioners and their
seniors. Senior medical practitioners are involved in the prescription while
juniors are more into clerical work than doing the prescription. This has also
contributed to the reduction of errors since it has been established that
juniors make more mistakes than their seniors.
E-prescription does not only benefit the
patients and pharmacists, but it is also advantageous to health insurance
providers, health care providers, employers and the community in general.
Healthcare providers spend less time verifying manual orders. Businesses are
enjoying financial benefits that are provided by this system since it has
reduced health costs they spend on their employees.
Disadvantages
Although E-prescription has reduced the
number of errors committed by medical practitioners, it provides room for new
problems or reintroduces those that are experienced in manual prescription. The
omission of important information wrong patient, incorrect drug prescription
are some of the errors that are associated with E-prescription. Many scholars
have embarked on establishing the problems associated with electronic
prescription besides the resistance that it faces from most medical
practitioners.
Inaccuracy
checking
One of the benefits of electronic
prescription is the additional time it provides for providers to offer other
services such as counseling to the patients. However, this benefit is offset by
the extra time the providers uses to check if there are any inaccuracies in the
prescription. It has been argued that although E-prescription reduces
follow-ups from pharmacists to prescribers, still it necessitates interaction
between the pharmacist and prescribers (Qureshi, Al-Bedah & Koenig, 2014).
Research has shown that still there are inaccurate dosing exists even with
E-prescription. Additionally, it has been established that it is not easy to
detect errors in E-prescription which threatens patient safety. It has also
been noticed that the physicians are likely to choose a wrong patient profile,
this also poses a threat to patient safety since wrong information will be used
in providing care (Qureshi, Al-Bedah & Koenig, 2014).
Design
issues
The designing of the electronic
prescription software determines whether there will be any problems with it.
The features of the software may contribute to an inefficient workflow in the
institution which may necessitate manual entries. Another concern is about
system failures which may lead to longer waiting times for patients.
Additionally, longer waiting times may be caused by late arrival of
prescriptions from the prescribers. E-prescription systems are costly. They
require a huge amount of capital for designing, maintenance, and transaction.
Like all other technological
advancements being witnessed across the world, E-prescription has its
advantages and disadvantages as well. Some of the appealing advantages include
enhanced security and patient safety, reduction of medical prescription errors
and drug costs. However, some of the notable disadvantages include the
reintroduction of some of the prescription errors and disruption in health
environment workflow due to system failures. It is believed that with the
continuous advancements in the technological field, these problems will be
addressed and E-prescription will result in more benefits than enhanced patient
safety. Utilization of E-prescription systems in the future is likely to
enhance workflow between healthcare providers and reduce prescription errors.
References
Barber, N. (2010). Electronic prescribing–safer,
faster, better? Journal of
health services research & policy, 15(suppl 1), 64-67.
Brushwood, D. B. (2003). Maximizing the value
of electronic prescription monitoring programs. The Journal of Law, Medicine &
Ethics, 31(1), 41-54.
Ginzburg, R., Barr, W. B., Harris, M., &
Munshi, S. (2009). Effect of a weight-based prescribing method within an electronic health record on prescribing errors. Am J Health-Syst Pharm, 66, 2037-2041.
Qureshi, N. A., Al-Bedah, A. M., & Koenig,
H. G. (2014). Handwritten to electronic prescriptions:
emerging views and practices, Saudi Arabia. British
Journal of Medicine and Medical
Research, 4(28), 4607.
Shawana, R., Rahman, N., Ahmad, M., Debray, M.,
Ylipettula, M., & Decleves, X. (2010). Electronic
prescribing reduces prescribing errors in public hospitals. Journal of Clinical Nursing, 20, 3233-3245.
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