How Mobile E-Prescribing Improves Your Practice
Colin Banas, M.D., M.H.A.
If you’re like most people, your smartphone is usually within reach. Your EHR? Probably not so much.
For busy physicians on the move, mobile e-prescribing gives you the freedom to write and renew prescriptions before or after work, when you’re on call, while traveling between your office and the hospital, or even during lunch.
While nearly all physicians send prescriptions electronically some of the time, studies show many often resort to the old ways of prescribing, which are rife with safety risks. For your practice—and your patients—to benefit from the safety and efficiency of e-prescribing, it’s crucial to make the process as easy as writing on a paper pad, no matter where you are.
That’s where your smartphone comes in.
Reduce the Risks of Paper Prescribing
Most physicians use e-prescribing through their practice’s electronic health record (EHR) system if you don’t have remote access to your EHR and need to send a prescription while out of the office, consider using the iPrescribe®mobile app from DrFirst instead.
By avoiding paper prescribing, you can reduce the risks of handwriting errors and steer clear of the time-consuming “phone tree” involved when calling in a prescription to the pharmacy. And if your practice doesn’t have an EHR, that’s OK too. Grab your smartphone or tablet, and you can quickly, easily, and securely use the app to send a prescription directly to the pharmacy.
You can even use iPrescribe for e-prescribing of controlled substances (EPCS). Typically (pre-COVID), you could only use EPCS when sitting in front of your EHR. If a patient legitimately needed a controlled medication for pain or anxiety on the weekend, you would have to tell the patient to wait until Monday. Imagine being able to e-prescribe on your smartphone to respond immediately to a post-op patient in pain, a cancer patient, or a sickle cell patient who has run out of medication.
No Decoding, Fewer Callbacks
Do you know how much time your staff spends on the phone with pharmacists? In 2019, more than 4 billion prescriptions were dispensed in the United States. According to the National Committee on Vital Health and Statistics, 30% of the required pharmacy callbacks to clarify information.
Beyond the impact on your practice’s efficiency, prescription delays or mistakes also can be a patient safety concern. The best e-prescribing solutions generate automatic alerts for allergies and potential drug interactions, so you can make adjustments before prescribing rather than causing a delay at the pharmacy or, worse, an adverse drug event.
With iPrescribe, you can pull 12 months of medication history to make safer prescribing decisions. iPrescribe also generates alerts for new prescription requests and renewals and triggers clinical alerts such as allergy and drug interactions.
Streamline Prescribing for Controlled Substances
Electronic prescribing for controlled substances (EPCS) has been in place for years, and now more states are mandating its use, with new deadlines going into effect on January 1, 2023.
Many states also require that prescribers check the Prescription Drug Monitoring Program (PDMP) database before writing a script for a controlled substance to help mitigate the opioid crisis. While we all value these checks, they can be disruptive and inefficient if you need to stop what you’re doing to access a separate system.
That’s another area where the convenience of e-prescribing can help. With iPrescribe, you can access a participating state database right within the app, whether in your office or using a smartphone or tablet from a remote location.
Mobile E-Prescribing Enables Remote Care
With the explosion of telehealth and changes in office procedures due to the pandemic, mobile e-prescribing is even more valuable because it’s available everywhere. Pharmacies also prefer it because it helps patients avoid an extra stop at the pharmacy to drop off a paper prescription.
Yet our recent consumer survey revealed that half of Americans who got prescriptions during the pandemic said their doctors mailed them a paper prescription or phoned or faxed the pharmacy. If you’re only prescribing some of the time electronically, consider adopting simple but powerful mobile solutions that eliminate the old ways of prescribing and the safety and efficiency risks they include.
Going mobile isn’t merely about convenience—it’s vital for your practice and the well-being of your patients.
See how the free iPrescribe mobile app empowers you to send prescriptions in seconds, even without access to a laptop or virtual private network (VPN). Validate your identity and enroll in minutes, automatically load your patients, and view six months of medication and real-time co-pay information.
About Colin Banas, MD
Colin Banas, M.D., M.H.A., is the Chief Medical Officer of DrFirst, an Internal Medicine Hospitalist, and the former Chief Medical Information Officer for VCU Health System in Richmond, Virginia.