Home Forums Discussions Problems EPCS NewCrop "special character" failure - solved.

I had an ampersand "&" in a sig for a specialist prescribed non-controlled drug in my med list - deleting the "&" solved the problem.

Although I never attempted to eRx this for the specialist, it only came to my attention when I tried to EPCS an unrelated medication and was unable to link to NewCrop via the "Manage via NewCrop Screens" control - it worked fine for the patients preceding and following, but persisted every time the particularly affected patient was seen. I could eRx my prescribed other noncontrolled meds without going through NewCrops just fine. But for EPCS prescriptions, instead of opening the NewCrop webpage, I would get an error message:
"A technical error has been automatically reported to your EMR/PM vendor. Contact them for more information. MSG 3 - RxInput XML parse error:
Please check the specified element name and value below for unusual characters and leading or trailing spaces.
Unexpected end of file has occurred. The following elements are not closed: dosageLong, OutsidePrescription, NCScript. Line 185, position 42."

I was not astute enough to interpret the error message as possibly relating to a medication I had no intention of ever prescribing but was entered elsewhere in my med list and that failed to prevent other non-controlled electronic prescribing, but prevented accessing the NewCrop EPCS screens at all. I was always too busy trying to attend the next patient to problem solve, but after hours today I discovered by changing the ampersand to "and" I could successfully connect to NewCrops for the patient in question. The ampersand was not the 42nd character, but it appears to have been the cause.

Man, that is f-ed up.
It is like we have gone back to DOS with NewCrop. No more writing in our language- we have to use theirs.

What I love is when the pharmacy changes "Give one po daily" to "Give one to JOHN SMITH every day." The sig with John Smith will not be allowed. Pharmacies. Don't get me going on them.

Yes, I am back.

just discovering bugs in e-prescribing dating back to at least 12/20/21, that I have never seen in over 8 years of use. Very worrisome.

Also, guardian angel support seems AWOL lately. No luck leaving phone message, and not even available for online "chat", which I thought was their preferred way of communicating. I've resorted to Email. Hope I don't have a major problem anytime soon.

Hi Dr Zwaan,

I just wanted to let you know that we did receive your email at 9:41pm on Sunday. The system did create a case in our tech queue for you. I have marked that case as high priority.

Thank you for your reply. I didn't know AC was monitoring this forum, but that is good. The problem seems less urgent today, but I am still unsettled by the things that I think I saw, and by the reports about NewCrop on this forum, especially as I just implemented EPCS. Talk to you tomorrow. Thanks, DrZ

If we could just get rid of ToStop and get a real EPCS vendor.