by Kevin M. Sanders

Beginning in January 2007, selected pharmacies in Athens will participate in the third and final phase of a patient safety study designed to help eliminate prescription errors. The study is funded by a $133,619 grant from the Ohio Medical Quality Foundation to Ohio University College of Osteopathic Medicine, in partnership with the University of Findlay School of Pharmacy.

Leading the study are Martha Simpson, D.O., M.B.A., assistant professor of family medicine at OU-COM, and Marc Sweeney, R.Ph., M.Div., Pharm.D., chairman and associate professor of pharmacy practice at the University of Findlay School of Pharmacy. Ohio University’s Voinovich Center for Leadership & Public Affairs will assist Simpson and Sweeney in assessing patient, physician and pharmacist attitudes and in identifying issues with electronic prescribing. The Ohio Pharmacists Association and the Ohio Osteopathic Association continue to serve as project sponsors.

“We believe we can show a decrease in preventable prescription errors through the adoption of e-prescribing tools,” says Simpson. “The foundation’s willingness to continue to fund it demonstrates the project’s promise to help improve patient safety.”

E-prescribing, or electronic prescription, allows direct electronic transmission of prescriptions to pharmacies.

“This is done already in hospital and similar institutional settings,” she says.

Athens is a city of approximately 22,000 with about eight pharmacies, and the study will look at electronic prescribing from the pharmacy and patient perspectives. Physicians participating in the study will be provided with the necessary computer software and hardware for electronic prescribing.

Two advantages of electronic prescribing, Simpson says, are the elimination of handwriting mistakes and prescriptions that are ready when patients arrive at the pharmacy.

Another benefit of electronic prescribing is that the software screens a patient’s drug history before the patient and the prescription leave the physician’s office, says Sweeney. Software checks the patient’s medical record to make sure that the new prescription will not interfere with other medications a patient is taking. Once a prescription has been reviewed and no problems are found, it is electronically sent to the pharmacy chosen by the patient.

“During phase III we will be looking at pharmacy and patient satisfaction issues in a limited geographical area. We believe, however, that our findings will be generalizable to the entire state,” says Simpson.

Also, in the future, electronic prescription could possibly open more direct avenues of communication and interaction between pharmacist and physician.

Phase I goals were to identify which elements of electronic prescription software were most important to physicians and pharmacists, select software and hardware for use in the second phase and the document the elements necessary to meet the needs and expectations of pharmacists and physicians. Phase II examined the adoption and utilization of electronic prescribing by physicians.

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The Ohio Medical Quality Foundation was established in 1995 by the Ohio General Assembly to improve health-care practices, including improvement of risk management and quality assurance in hospitals and outpatient settings.