Home Forums Discussions Problems Matching incoming prescriptions

An incoming refill request needs to be matched to a patient first and then to an existing active medication. The problem is the match process does not pick up differences in the two.

For Ex.
Incoming: Atenolol 50 mg, take one tab daily

can be easily matched to any of the following
1. Atenolol 50 mg, take half tablet daily
2. Furosemide 40 mg daily

It does not compare either the drug or the dose. That beats the purpose of matching. Once you match, the incoming eRx goes through. This causes a potential for error and I think is a important patient safety issue.

Lot of times we change the dosing of drugs on a given patient during visits without send a new prescription to the pharmacy. If the incoming prescription gets renewed again it could be a problem.

I also see this as an important problem. You can clearly see in the regular prescribing window what the current medications are. However, you may unknowingly send a refill for a medicine at an old dose when you have lowered or raised it, as you cannot see that screen. Perhaps they need an 'existing' med screen that comes up. I find myself often going back and forth between the med history and the refill screen. That being said, it is a very fast way to refill the meds, but you have to be careful on your matches.