ONC Issues E-Prescribing Guide
By Megan Williams, contributing writer
In response to the rise in the use of electronic prescribing, the Office Of The National Coordinator (ONC) has released the guide, “A Prescription for e-Prescribers: Getting the Most Out of Electronic Prescribing,” to help your healthcare IT clients manage medication.
The Environment
E-prescribing has caught on in a big way in the United States, with 90 percent of pharmacies currently able to accept e-prescriptions. On the physician side, 70 percent of doctors are prescribing electronically through an EHR (electronic health records) system, leaving no state in the country with an e-prescribing rate of less than 41 percent. Any provider using ONC certified health IT is able to prescribe electronically.
The Guide
The guide is intended to serve as a resource that highlights key questions that healthcare providers should consider, as well as potential changes that might be needed to improve medication management in the e-prescribing process.
The Workflow
The guide primary consists of an eight-step workflow, which includes the steps of:
- sign on
- patient identification
- review of current patient data
- drug selection
- entry of parameters
- authorization and signing
- selecting the pharmacy to print or send the prescription
- pharmacy review and processing
Break Outs
Each element in the guide (“Sign On” excluded) features the ability to click and access more information. For example, the drug selection area consists of four questions that can be navigated through:
- “Do your drug description names include the drug name, strength, strength qualifier, route of administration, and dosage form?”
- “Are you able to find all the drug description names that you want to prescribe within your e-prescribing system?”
- “Does your system allow you to enter free-text drug description names?”
- “Are you able to e-prescribe a controlled substance medication?”
Below each question is a response that not only answers the questions, but also links to other related topics within the answer text on the HealthIT.gov website.
ONC emphasizes the specific benefits of your healthcare It clients using an e-prescribing system that is integrated with an EHR over a stand-alone counterpart.