Standalone e-Prescribing Common Features
Some practices have adopted an Electronic Health Record (EHR) that allows them to maintain
comprehensive electronic records for patients and eliminate paper charts. Prescribing is one of many functions found
within an EHR and some EHRs include certified e-Prescribing solutions and some
EHRs do not.
There are also stand-alone e-Prescribing systems designed specifically for sending and receiving prescription information, and
use wireless handheld devices for prescribers with a desktop web version for staff.
Many of these are certified e-Prescribing solutions.
Advantages for stand-alone
solutions are lower startup costs if you don't
currently have an EHR, they are quicker to implement and
easier to train, they quickly automate the refill and new
prescription processing, and they can help eliminate
the endless faxes and phone calls without having to
implement a fully functional EHR solution.
Disadvantages include the added time for double
entry between systems, the costs of uploading and
linking your practice management system to the
standalone e-Prescribing application, and the data
entered into the stand-alone solution may not be able to be transferred later to an EHR or
it can
be transferred but at an additional cost.
Typical features of stand-alone e-Prescribing
solutions currently available
Clinical information displayed:
• Patient eligibility
• Formulary information
• Medication history
• Pharmacy fill history
Real-time clinical decision support tools:
• Drug-Drug interaction checking
• Drug-Allergy interaction checking
• Appropriate dosage checking • Duplicate therapy alerts
One click access to:
• Renewal requests from pharmacies
• Multiple patients’ medications renewal
• New prescriptions from your favorites list
Send prescriptions electronically to the patient’s pharmacy of
choice, including mail-order pharmacies:
• Caremark
• ESI
• Medco
Other common features:
• Split prescription functionality can send starter dose to local pharmacy and additional prescription to mail order in a single transaction.
• Share patient data securely with other treating physicians and send/receive referrals.
• Web based access through PC and PDA or
Smartphone, or PC only.
• Patient information protected by strict privacy and security measures.
• Practice management system interfaces are available, from one time data
dump, to one-way/two-way data integration. Costs vary.
• Most require patient first name, last name, date of birth,
zipcode, and gender to enter a new patient.
![[Valid RSS]](images/valid-rss.png "Validate my RSS feed")
