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.
* * *
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.
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News for the week of Jan 1 – Dec 6
