Report details plan for e-prescribing

A study makes suggestions for doctors looking at electronic prescribing systems.

By Tyler Chin, AMNews staff. July 26, 2004.

Recommendations for creating electronic prescribing systems suitable for office-based physicians are outlined in a report issued by an expert panel assembled by Rand, the Santa Monica, Calif.-based think tank.

About 60 recommendations were made, and two-thirds were deemed achievable within the next three years.

The report, "Recommendations for Comparing Electronic Prescribing Systems: Results of an Expert Consensus Process," is designed to offer guidance to physicians seeking to buy e-prescribing systems and to the software companies that design them.

Recommendations include:

• Import patient identification and demographic data from electronic medical records.
• Provide the patient's medication list to prescribers who have care responsibility for the patient.
• Display a list of medications appropriate to the diagnosis.
• Guard against efforts to promote specific drugs by third parties.
• Distinguish alerts based on patient safety and outcomes from those based on formulary adherence.

The report and a supplement are on the Health Affairs Web site (content.healthaffairs.org/cgi/content/abstract/hlthaff.w4.305v1).