Medication History
The medication history standard is
equally critical because the e-prescribing system will put doctors on
notice of potentially bad drug interactions, says Szabo.
"You have a system that can show
the doctor what drugs the patient has purchased in, say, the last six
months," he says. "Even if there’s no drug-drug interaction, the
doctor might look at the list and say, ‘Boy, you’re taking a
lot of pills here.’"
It’s also useful for
medication reconciliation in cases where elderly, incompetent or other
patients can’t clearly tell the doctor what medications
they’re on, Szabo adds.
But on the flip side, Poon warns
that this can potentially be too much of a good thing.
"It’s very easy for a system
to over-alert," he says. "Physicians may get too many alerts as they try
to prescribe and may blow past all of them. They could throw the baby
out with the bathwater and miss the one truly important
interaction."
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