When Life Depends on a Decimal Point
30% of all prescriptions nationally are handwritten and require a call back from the pharmacy. That’s alarming on two fronts. First, we all know doctors’ handwriting tends to be illegible. Secondly, in our paper-driven health care system, a pharmacy has to reenter the doctor’s handwritten or faxed prescription information—and whenever information is reentered the potential for errors increases.
Transmitting prescriptions electronically means they will automatically appear in the pharmacy’s electronic system as a real prescription. There will be no illegible prescriptions to decipher and no reentering to be done. The system we all depend on for relieving and curing our health problems will be substantially safer. That is why The Rhode Island Quality Institute chose e-prescribing as its first initiative. We believe that electronic communications between doctors’ offices and pharmacies could significantly reduce medical errors associated with handwritten, fax and telephone prescriptions, and minimize misunderstandings based on illegible handwriting and medications with similar sounding names.
