[Electronic prescription: limitations and possible improvements to ensure greater adherence to treatments]

The electronic prescription has meant an evolution in the quality of health care, but it has a series of deficiencies that compromise the adherence to treatments. The objective of this work was to collect and group these limitations and propose the changes that could solve them.

During 2017 and 2018, through dispensing and pharmacotherapeutic monitoring activities, incidents related to the electronic prescription were collected in a pharmacy in Santander and their causes were identified. A survey was conducted and sent to the Information Centers of the Medicines of the rest of the regions to know if the same problems were shared and the resulting data were treated by frequency distribution.

We detected 1,500 incidents related to the way of access to the treatment and its activation period, with the availability of the medication when the patient requested it and those in which the assessment of the problem by the doctor was essential. The survey data showed that in 100% of the CCAA the patient must return to the doctor when there is an incidence, because there is no protocol to solve it from the pharmacy.

These incidents compromise the adherence to treatments and the health of patients. To avoid them, we propose the elimination of the password that is necessary to access the treatment, the establishment of a minimum period of 30 days for its activation, the creation of protocols so that the pharmacist can solve problems and perform dispensations in special circumstances, and finally, the optimization of the communication between pharmacist and doctor.