E-Prescribing was implemented in the year 2009 as part of the Health Information Technology for Economic and Clinical Health Act (HITECH Act) in the US. This wise and wide-spread usage of technology is slowly becoming a must to remain compliant with healthcare mandates.

So why are you required to make this transition? How will this impact your business and who will help you implement this solution in the best possible way? Figuring out the answers to these questions will help you formulate a strategy for successfully implementing e-prescriptions into your practice.

Analyzing your current situation

/ Stressful to plan long vacations since you need to consider the patients who depend on your regular prescriptions.
/ Instances when you get callbacks from your patients or their pharmacies seeking clarification on the prescriptions.
/ Added paperwork to maintain a patient’s historical records.
/ The fear of a missing prescription pad which could possibly mean that someone might be abusing drugs at your expense.

Listing down the objectives

As a prescriber, once you have a clearer image of the areas of improvements in your practice, do list them down as a series of objectives to be achieved. Your finalized eRx solution must have the ability to resolve all your concerns. Try to gather the maximum information on this subject and make sure that you reach out to some well-established customized eRx software solution experts. Spend some time researching various eRx solutions in the market and choose accordingly.

Resource allocation

Make sure that you have a designated team who would be involved in this transition. You can have them to review different eRx solutions on your behalf. After all, your team should be equally comfortable with the product. Set up demos for the different e-prescription software solutions available in the market and take your team’s feedbacks into serious consideration.

Things to look out for

Apart from your requirements, do look out for functionalities that improve the quality of your practice. For example, some custom eRx solutions come with a vast library of drugs and their characteristics. This would come handy when looking for a specific drug. It would also help your patients understand the correct usage of various medicines. e-prescribing software should save all your patients' records so that you can refer to them whenever you want to revisit.
eRx solution you opt for should allow your patients to schedule a refill reminder that automatically sends you a notification to authorize a new prescription. This eRx solution should also be compatible with your smartphone or other devices so that you can access it hassle-free, even when remote.

Finalizing the eRx solution

Once all your requirements are met and you are satisfied with the product, ditch the prescription pad and move forward. This will save a lot of efforts. Not only will this smoothen out your practice, it will also protect your patients from the harms of drug abuse, missing out on medications or consumption of wrong drugs due to confusions and miscommunications. It is a product worth investment.

Get set, go

Having done all the above, the final challenge would be to ensure that your team transitions smoothly into this digital space and is comfortable using the eRx software solution on daily basis. Ensure that everyone in the team gets trained on the proper usage of the software. It may seem like a tedious process at first, but the end results will surely be worth the investment.

Vinfotech has been instrumental in developing healthcare software solutions for various medical institutions. Our goal is to provide quality healthcare solutions that enhance the medical practices. Our medical solutions are designed to provide strong, but user-friendly support to healthcare practices. In case of any further queries, please feel free to contact us.