I recently accompanied my mother to UCSF for a follow-up procedure after her liver transplant. When it was time for her to be discharged home the nurse handed me the prescription below. Forget for a second that there are about a half dozen things wrong with it and just focus on the distinct nature of the prescription blank.
Tag: ePrescribing
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Not everyone is happy with the idea of ePrescribing
The Angry Pharmacist: “Don’t say that your pharmacy associations don’t do anything for you! Now GNP pharmacies get [$%#@] by their own for the low-low cost of only $0.30/eRx. Here’s something about “quality, safety, and efficiencyâ€: I have seen more errors, decimal point, and unit [$%#@] via SureScript eRx in one week than YEARS OF PAPER PRESCRIPTIONS. In fact, I keep a file of all of the eRx [$%#@] that I get (it gets about 2-3 a day, that’s 15 a week) so when doctors say how WONDERFUL it is, I show them how many lives I have saved. I’ve seen injection dose written instead of an oral dose, blatant overdoses, everything you can imagine. I’ve even had controlled substances faxed to 2 different pharmacies 1 min apart for a cash paying patient MULTIPLE TIMES. Hows that for safety and quality! …Now here’s the dirty secret of eRx’s … You see, the “old fashioned wayâ€, doctors had to sign each Rx they gave out to the patient. However those days are long gone thanks to ePrescribing. Now all some idiot has to know is the doctors password and ANYONE IN THE OFFICE CAN SEND OFF PRESCRIPTIONS. That’s right, this bullshit doesn’t save the pharmacies any time, but it saves the doctor a bunch because its pretty much giving anyone who works in the office the power to sign and give patients legit prescriptions (even for controlled substances!) Before, you had to steal the doctors pad and write out phonies, now anyone in the office with access to the eRx terminal can splatter out narcotics to every pharmacy that takes eRx’s and nobody would be the wiser.” – The author has some pretty interesting things to say about ePrescribing in general. I guess the process isn’t exactly ready for prime time. Take a minute to read the entire article, but only if you don’t have sensitive ears.