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E-prescribing set to scrap docs’ scribbles on Long Island

Ambulatory Safety Monitor, November 4, 2004

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Joining the growing wave of hospitals looking to streamline and improve the working relationship between physicians and pharmacies, the North Shore-Long Island Jewish Health System and Stony Brook University Hospital are initiating a shift to e-prescribing for their doctors.

According to a story in the Long Island Business News, North Shore-LIJ hopes to have the electronic prescribing system in place by 2006, and could have 10 hospitals using the technology within a decade. The move is part of an overall shift toward paperless medical records and electronic case management in its ambulatory care division.

North Shore-LIJ administrators' decision to move to e-prescribing-a system where doctors use handheld electronic devices to enter prescriptions directly into a database, which transmits those prescriptions to the computers of hospital or private pharmacies-was motivated by a desire to improve patient safety.

"If the orders don't seem proper, if the dose is twice the normal dose, the computer flags it ... you dramatically reduce errors," said Dr. Norman H. Edelman, vice president of health sciences at Stony Brook University, explaining the new safeguards that this computerized system offers. E-prescribing is also thought to be safer for the patient because it cuts down on human error that comes from pharmacists trying to decipher doctors' sometimes illegible handwriting.

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