Pros and Cons of Electronic Prescribing

From Pharmacy Today, April 2019, a publication of the American Pharmacists Association: In 2017, more than 98% of U.S. pharmacies accepted e-prescriptions; Minnesota is among five states that currently require e-prescribing (although a task force is working to increase implementation rates). But the move to e-prescriptions and health records has come with unintended consequences: new types of errors that never existed in the written world. As a result, e-prescribing may produce problems that can lead to patient harm, such as improper patient selection from electronic lists, alert fatigue, improper or difficult product selection, and interfacing challenges between prescribers and pharmacies. Read the full article, including suggestions for improvement.