Paper prescriptions will soon be distinctly "last season"
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《英国医生杂志》
London
Paper prescriptions will soon be history as a system of electronic transmission of prescriptions is to be phased in from early in 2005 in England.
Currently the doctor writes or prints a prescription for the patient to take to the pharmacist, who reads and dispenses it before adding it to the pile destined for the Prescription Pricing Authority. Here it's read again to determine who should be paid, how much, and for what. Given that a majority of prescriptions are already prepared on a computer, messing around with bits of paper is logically indefensible. The information required by the people who need to read what's on the prescription is already stored electronically—but it's not delivered to them in this form.
The new system will be accessible in all GP surgeries and community pharmacies, and it will be designed to meet the professions' own standards of confidentiality and security. Patients will be able to choose which pharmacy to collect their medicines at, and the system will incorporate safeguards to prevent duplicate supplies being dispensed. Nurse prescribing won't initially be part of the system, but it's assumed that they too will eventually join in.
So much for the dream. To test the new system, three private sector consortiums—each with expertise in computing and pharmaceuticals—have run pilot studies of three different systems.
The pilots were launched in summer 2002 and intended to last six months, but early recruiting difficulties forced them to run for longer than planned. In the end, more than 30 000 prescriptions were issued by 34 general practices and handled by 23 pharmacies.
An evaluation by Sowerby Centre for Health Informatics at Newcastle upon Tyne reached carefully measured conclusions. It found the scheme "technically viable," adding: "Patients, GPs and pharmacists are on the whole likely to find ETP acceptable, and may come to appreciate the benefits in time."
As that last phrase hints, the pilots seem not to have left users howling for immediate implementation. But the report attributes certain "negative attitudes" to what it describes as "temporary difficulties encountered with new software and business processes."(Geoff Watts)
Paper prescriptions will soon be history as a system of electronic transmission of prescriptions is to be phased in from early in 2005 in England.
Currently the doctor writes or prints a prescription for the patient to take to the pharmacist, who reads and dispenses it before adding it to the pile destined for the Prescription Pricing Authority. Here it's read again to determine who should be paid, how much, and for what. Given that a majority of prescriptions are already prepared on a computer, messing around with bits of paper is logically indefensible. The information required by the people who need to read what's on the prescription is already stored electronically—but it's not delivered to them in this form.
The new system will be accessible in all GP surgeries and community pharmacies, and it will be designed to meet the professions' own standards of confidentiality and security. Patients will be able to choose which pharmacy to collect their medicines at, and the system will incorporate safeguards to prevent duplicate supplies being dispensed. Nurse prescribing won't initially be part of the system, but it's assumed that they too will eventually join in.
So much for the dream. To test the new system, three private sector consortiums—each with expertise in computing and pharmaceuticals—have run pilot studies of three different systems.
The pilots were launched in summer 2002 and intended to last six months, but early recruiting difficulties forced them to run for longer than planned. In the end, more than 30 000 prescriptions were issued by 34 general practices and handled by 23 pharmacies.
An evaluation by Sowerby Centre for Health Informatics at Newcastle upon Tyne reached carefully measured conclusions. It found the scheme "technically viable," adding: "Patients, GPs and pharmacists are on the whole likely to find ETP acceptable, and may come to appreciate the benefits in time."
As that last phrase hints, the pilots seem not to have left users howling for immediate implementation. But the report attributes certain "negative attitudes" to what it describes as "temporary difficulties encountered with new software and business processes."(Geoff Watts)