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| For Patients | |
| Taking medications can be scary in today's world where medication errors are common. However, there are things that you can do to help protect yourself and your family. | |
| If your doctor or other healthcare providers that routinely prescribe your medications used e-prescribing (using a computer to write a prescription), your risk of medication errors could be significantly reduced. | |
| How Does E-Prescribing Make Medications Safer for You? | |
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- Checks for allergies, drug interactions, and duplication between the new medication and your current medications
- Allows your healthcare provider to record any reactions or side effects you experience with a medication
- Helps your provider review previous medication therapies that did not work well for your condition
- Eliminates errors that may occur when your healthcare provider's handwriting is difficult for your pharmacist to read
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| How Does E-Prescribing Help Improve the Efficiency of the Prescription Process? | |
| Less time and hassle at pharmacy since prescription has already been checked for: | |
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- Dangerous interactions, duplications, and allergies
- Coverage by your insurance company's formulary
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| What Other Benefits Can I Experience? | |
| Potential for lower co-payments because of prescriber formulary check at time of prescribing
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| Increased satisfaction from knowledge that your healthcare providers are doing things to improve safety and from a more efficient process at the pharmacy
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| Visit the sites below to find out how to reduce the risk that you or your family will experience a medication error: | |
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| For Prescribers | |
| Improving patient safety should not put an undue burden on those providing healthcare. At MedicaLINX, we are developing solutions that benefit each and every stakeholder involved in the provision of quality healthcare. This includes physicians, nurse practitioners, physician's assistants, dentists, pharmacists, payors, government agencies, and many others. We must work together to ensure that patient safety is our top priority, while also easing the burden on those caring for patients. | |
| Benefits of e-Prescribing: | |
| Efficiency | |
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- Reduce prescription-related
phone calls and faxes from pharmacies
- Decreased time spent dealing
with prescription issues allows redeployment of nurses and office staff
- Provides links to comprehensive drug information resources
- Once trained, ease-of-use allows you to write a prescription as fast as you could by hand, with the addition of numerous safety checks built in
- Patient database can be imported from existing office applications
- Flexible platform allows for
provider preference
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| Recognition for Technology Utilization | |
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- Dedication to patient safety
- Pay-for-Performance Programs
- Potential to decrease malpractice insurance premiums
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| Snapshot | |
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- The number of visits that result in the prescriber writing a prescription:
4 out of 5
- The number of prescriptions that require contact between the pharmacist and prescriber for changes or
clarification:
30%
- The time saved by prescribers using e-prescribing:
2 to 10 minutes/patient
- Prescribers using e-prescribing can reduce callbacks from pharmacists by:
50%
- Time saved by nurses compared to paper or telephone prescriptions:
2.87 minutes/Rx
- Time saved by the office in performing Rx renewals:
10 minutes/renewal
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| For Pharmacists | |
| As a pharmacist, you didn't go to school for so many years to work in a setting plagued by endless phone tag with prescribers'
offices and insurance companies. E-prescribing can help to significantly reduce these burdens. | |
| Efficiency | |
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- Reduce Rx-related phone calls and faxes with prescriber's offices
- Receive legible prescriptions
that have been pre-screened for allergies, drug interactions, and therapeutic duplications
- Prescriptions are more likely to be covered by the patient's formulary, thereby decreasing phone calls related to formulary issues
- Perform job functions at a
higher level by having information about sample and over-the-counter medications that the patient is taking
- Potential to eliminate need for manual data entry into the pharmacy computer system
- Increase revenue-generating
pharmacy services such as disease state management and patient counseling
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| Snapshot | |
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- Number of seconds saved by a pharmacist using electronic data:
97 seconds/Rx
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| For Health Plans | |
| Benefits of Implementing e-Prescribing in Your Health Plan | |
| Cost Management, Quality of Care, and Satisfaction | |
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- Increase formulary compliance
- Increase generic utilization rates
- Decrease office visits, emergency room visits, and hospitalizations related to medication errors and adverse drug events
- Track indications for medication use
- Recognition of improved safety and quality of care
- Improve provider satisfaction through the efficiency that may be gained through deployment of e-prescribing
- Decrease fraudulent prescriptions and abuse of pharmacy benefit
- Track and trend via blinded reports
- Satisfy government mandates related to patient and medication safety
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| Snapshot |
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- Impact of generic substitution & formulary compliance on Rx costs:
(-) $0.75 to 3.20/Rx
- Average ROI impact to managed care organizations/health systems:
$575 to 700/provider/month
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