Electronic Prescribing Connects Pharmacists with Patients' Circle of Care

Last year, the scope of practice for Ontario pharmacists expanded to include assessing and prescribing for 13 minor ailments, following suit behind provinces like Alberta that already had similar standards in place.

With emergency departments chronically suffering from lengthy wait times and nearly 1.8 million Ontarians without a family doctor — a number that’s estimated to increase to more than three million in the coming years — this is an important step to help bridge some of the gaps in health care today. In order to optimize the benefits to patients and ensure proper continuity of care, we need to prioritize implementing tools that enable faster, more effective communication within the patient’s circle of care.

Tools like PrescribeIT, a national e-prescribing service, connect prescribers to community retail pharmacies to enable the secure, digital transmission of prescriptions. But what is often overlooked is that the platform also offers the ability to send secure clinical communication through the integrated messaging tool. This allows pharmacists and prescribers to quickly align on an appropriate course of action and provide the best medication approach for their patients.

When a patient’s ‘minor’ concern isn’t minor

Pharmacists are a valuable point of contact and can aid in screening and advising patients, especially in situations where they can’t access a physician. However, patients and medical professionals alike always need to be mindful of the possibility that something presenting as minor could actually be symptomatic of something more severe.

Recently, one of my patients visited their pharmacy with complaints of urinary tract infection (UTI) symptoms. Based on some of the symptoms the patient was describing, the pharmacist was concerned that it was more than just a UTI and contacted me using PrescribeIT’s clinical communications tool, which functions like an instant messaging system. As a result of the communication from the patient to the pharmacist and the pharmacists to us, we were able to bring that patient in for a same day appointment and, upon clinical examination, determine that it was actually a kidney infection.

In that case, the communication between the pharmacy and my office proved to be invaluable in ensuring the patient received timely care and was kept out of the emergency room. As with emergency room visits and specialist consultations, pharmacist-administered consultations and prescriptions need to be communicated back to the primary care physician. This ensures that they are kept informed of potential changes in their patients’ health status and recurrent issues, and can ensure appropriate follow ups are completed.

e-Prescribing ensures best outcomes for patients

However, as with any significant change, it’s not without hesitancy, challenges and kinks that need to be worked through as we establish new ways of working and best practices. I am mindful that administrative burden is a challenge facing many physicians and with this new expanded scope, this can create an added layer of communication between pharmacists and physicians. Already, we are seeing an increase in the number of faxes from pharmacies, which need to be appropriately transcribed into our electronic medical record (EMR) system. With e-prescribing, these communications get documented directly within our EMR, which eliminates the extra clerical work of processing a fax while still ensuring accurate and up-to-date patient records.

The ultimate goal of changes like expanding pharmacists’ scope of practice is to improve the care patients receive, in terms of both access and quality. By improving access, as this change does, we can’t allow it to lead to more fragmented care. Implementing tools like e-Prescribing that enable secure, streamlined communication within the patient circle of care will allow us to optimize the value pharmacists bring by taking a more active role in patient care.

Click here for more information about PrescribeIT and why e-prescribing is an essential tool for enhancing communication.

Dr. Lino Lagrotteria is a family physician in Hamilton, Ont., an assistant clinical professor in the department of family medicine at McMaster University and a member of the PrescribeIT Clinical Advisory Sub-Committee. He has an interest in digital health technologies to improve communication among health-care providers and enable better patient care.