One of the key components in both electronic health records and health information exchange is electronic prescribing or e-prescribing.  This is the capability for a prescriber to electronically transmit a patient’s prescription to the pharmacy of the patient’s choice.

The process virtually eliminates mistakes being made through illegible handwriting.  It also allows the prescription to be checked against all of the other patient’s prescriptions that reside in a central hub repository called SureScripts (http://www.surescripts.com/).  This system will alert the prescriber to any possible drug interactions, allergy cautions and gender and age restrictions. 

A frequent HITOC discussion was how to promote e-prescribing throughout Oregon and the focus was almost exclusively on the physician community.  I found myself reminding the group that dentists are also prescribers and should be considered.

My position with DMC allowed me to make e-prescribing a priority in our DAISY software development process.  We began this work in 2011 and installed our first dental beta site in January of 2012.  Subsequent sites have allowed our testing clients to issue several thousand dental prescriptions electronically in the last few months.  We intend to make electronic prescribing available to all of our clients in August, 2012 (http://tinyurl.com/7qsfbtz).

A right click that will provide more patient convenience, while improving patient safety.