Physician practices, e-prescribing and accessing information to improve prescribing decisions

Area of Science:

• Health Informatics
• Health Services Research
• Medical Economics

Background:

• Policy makers promote electronic prescribing (e-prescribing) via financial incentives to reduce medication errors and healthcare costs.
• E-prescribing systems can provide access to crucial patient data, including medication histories and formulary information.

Purpose of the Study:

• To investigate challenges physician practices face in effectively utilizing e-prescribing features.
• To identify barriers to the routine use of patient-specific data within e-prescribing systems.

Main Methods:

• Qualitative study involving 24 physician practices.
• Interviews and analysis of e-prescribing system usage and perceived barriers.

Main Results:

• Most practices had access to formulary information, but only half had patient medication histories readily available.
• Physicians often did not routinely review available data due to cumbersome system interfaces and perceived low data utility.
• Barriers included difficult data integration into patient records and time constraints during patient visits.

Conclusions:

• Effective use of e-prescribing features is hindered by system usability and data perceived value.
• Physician adoption of e-prescribing data features is influenced by perceived need, data quality, and system ease of use.
• Strategies to promote generic prescribing, such as default settings for pharmacist substitution, were commonly implemented.