EHRs (electronic health records) are becoming more popular in healthcare. This has led to electronic prescribing capabilities that have increased in popularity. E-prescribing or electronic prescribing has many benefits. It can improve patient safety and efficiency as well as reduce medication errors.
Effective e-prescribing begins with selecting an EHR system of high quality that has been approved by the Office of the National Coordinator of Health Information Technology (ONC) for electronic prescribing. The certification assures the EHR is compliant with certain security and reliability standards.
To ensure the safety and efficacy of e-prescribing, it is essential that healthcare professionals follow best practice guidelines once they have a certified EHR. Here are some of the most important practices.
- Conducting a medication reconciliation: Before prescribing any medication, healthcare providers should review the patient’s medication history to ensure that the medication is safe and appropriate for the patient’s condition.
- Clinical Decision Support (CDS), tools. These CDS tools allow healthcare providers to detect potential drug interactions, allergic reactions, or other risk associated with certain medications.
- Use standard medication names, dosages and names: Standardizing medications names and dosages will reduce confusion and help prevent mistakes.
- Electronic prior authorization (ePA), which can be used to reduce time and effort needed for prior authorization of medications that are required, is a good option.
- Patients should be educated: The healthcare providers must inform patients of the potential side effects and allow them to have questions.
Healthcare providers can make sure that e-prescribing remains safe, effective, and efficient by following these guidelines.