While physicians who have embraced e-prescribing wouldn’t go back to paper prescriptions, they report major barriers to using advanced e-prescribing features that many advocates believe offer the greatest potential to improve the safety and quality of health care, according to a study by Center for Studying Health System Change researchers published online in Health Affairs. The study was based on discussions conducted between November 2005 and March 2006 with 26 organizations--medical practices, health plans, e-prescribing vendors, and pharmacies.
While physicians were positive about the basic features of e-prescribing, products often lacked advanced features, such as the ability to maintain complete patient medication lists, clinical decision support tools, and access to patient-specific formulary data. If the products had those advanced features, physicians often did not use them because of implementation hurdles or their perceptions that the features did not add value, according to lead author Joy M. Grossman, PhD, a senior health researcher at HSC.
Among the hurdles cited by physicians were challenges to maintaining complete patient medication lists, difficulty obtaining accurate patient-specific formulary information, and limited connectivity with pharmacies and mail-order PBMs.
