I have been using electronic prescriptions for almost a year. For good reason: There’s a deadline looming: Come March 27, 2016, Dentists and doctors in New York state are mandated to submit all prescriptions electronically to the pharmacy of the patients choice (this deadline existed last year and was postponed for 1 year).
I do, of course, understand the importance of electronic prescriptions: it reduces errors, increases efficiency, and saves valuable time.
The big wrinkle, is this silly mess of a website:
PMP stands for Prescription Monitoring Program. It’s another New York State mandate that requires all Dentists and doctors to search a rather archaically (circa 1994) designed site (the kind that requires you to enter several passwords that expire every few weeks) for a patient’s history for evidence of frequent controlled substance use. Presumably, this will reduce the incidence of “drug shopping” by addicted patients.
Aside from being poorly designed, there’s another problem: the PMP registry is closed circuit TV – data from the registry isn’t accessible anywhere else.
If, for example, a treating dentist would like to prescribe a controlled substance like Valium for an anxious patient prior to a dental procedure, the treating physician, effective March 27th 2016, is required by law to log onto 2 separate websites, using 4 passwords and two-factor authentication to prescribe the medication. A prayer (or expletive) by the physician is then uttered (that the data actually arrives to the pharmacy!).
To top it all off, a recent survey by the Medical Society of the State of New York shows that more than 40% of all physicians aren’t prepared for electronic prescriptions.
So, is this digital process making things easier, or more complicated?
Clearly, the bungled mess needs fixing.