Okay, I had to re-read Bert's post from yesterday about ten times, but I think I finally understand all the points raised. I may have to respond to them in sections, but let me take a swing at it:
[Bert says: "how would AC know which database to search when looking for a medication?"]
I think the answer has to be: it will look where we tell it to. Just give me one simple button to select "AmazingMeds" vs "CustomMeds or "MyMeds" or whatever you want to call it. Not only is that the simplest and most direct method, it also introduces the possibility of a new feature, the ability to call up a med from AmazingMeds, edit it, and place it in your personal database for easy retrieval later (I had not originally envisioned that).
[Bert says: "Having the different formats and strengths come up anytime you choose a medication is very helpful. It's nice to know exactly what the medication comes in and then what strengths and not have to look it up."]
Well, it *can* be helpful, if all the different formats and strengths are available at your local pharmacy. Or, if you're not already sure what you want to prescribe.
The AmazingMeds database is very comprehensive. In fact, it may be TOO comprehensive for everyday use by many docs. It has *every* form of *every* medication, including forms that are not available at my pharmacy (in a small city of 8,000), and certainly forms that are not going to be available at a small-town drugstore. However, once you learn that a certain kind of medicine is not available, you can't eliminate that med from the database, so you keep writing that med, and the pharmacy keeps calling you and saying "We don't keep that strength!"
Furthermore, if I know I want the Lisinopril 10 mg tablet that I have written for thousands of times, I don't want to have to stop and hunt through the twenty-one lisinopril-containing products on AmazingMeds (eight of which are misspelled) -- I want "Lisinopril 10 mg tablet" to be right there before me.
As I explained to Bert, my idea is founded on the hypothesis that most doctors just don't use that dang many medications.
The average doc probably uses a few hundred medications, in one or two forms, in a few different dosages. And once they figure out what they like, they keep prescribing the same thing over and over again through inertia until overwhelming outside forces cause them to change their ways. And, they want to be able to write for it as quickly as possible.
I just want a way to pick quickly through the few meds that I actually use, instead of sorting through eleven Amoxils and twenty-one Lisinoprils every time I write for Amoxil or Lisinopril. I want the Rxs that I write out of habit to *spring* to the prescription writer, as they spring to my real-life prescription pad now.
Okay, my nurse is banging on my office door. I'll go ahead and post this. Have a great day.
Brian
