Question: My doctor in Florida insists that all prescriptions be sent electronically to the pharmacy. I prefer to have a paper prescription in order to shop around for the best price. What can I do?
Answer: While most states have provisions allowing electronic prescribing, and some have extremely strict requirements mandating their use, all have exceptions that allow consumer choice. PharmacyChecker.com CEO Tod Cooperman, MD, wrote about this issue in an earlier blog post as it relates to electronic prescribing in the State of New York. But what about Florida?
Here’s the good news! Florida law states “electronic prescribing shall not interfere with a patient’s freedom to choose a pharmacy.”
The main reason that states have adopted rules to encourage electronic prescribing is to prevent the abuse of prescription narcotics, which is a national epidemic.
E-prescribing facilitates the integration of prescription records into the patient’s medical record, has the potential to minimize medication errors, and may even reduce prescription theft and forgery of controlled drugs. There are substantial benefits to e-prescribing.
However, the benefits of electronic prescribing need to be balanced with the patient’s freedom of choice and access to affordable medication, which for some patients means having a prescription in hand to shop around for the lowest price at local pharmacies or to send to an international online pharmacy.
So what can you do in Florida?
If your healthcare provider says they can’t give you a paper prescription, let them know the law is on your side. Explain that your choice of pharmacy is often based on the cost of the medication being prescribed, which means having a prescription in hand to shop around for the lowest price at local pharmacies or to send to safe international online pharmacies, which will require that valid paper prescription!
A year later and NY deaths from opioids has increased 136%. Now they will spend $38 Million every year to battle the problem. The DEA also makes note that e-prescribing is prone to widespread abuse and (this is interesting) doesn’t provide forensic evidence to exonerate a physician of wrongdoing (Forgery). Let’s be honest this was done largely to stop forged scripts. NY had the right idea by mandating the use of preprinted tamper-resistant prescription forms – but people would steal the forms and forge prescriptions with them. I would also like to note that 84% of healthcare providers use an EMR system. Hence the scripts are printed from a laser printer so we don’t have any handwriting issues and drug interaction problems. So the prescription pad is on its way out. With all that said I would like to point out the two main flaws that have enabled non-prescribed opioids to make it to the street. The first is the use of plain paper prescriptions. These are prescriptions that are printed on plain copier paper and commonly the software adds a complex graphic image that is claimed to be a pantograph. The bottom line here is if the laser printer creates the security feature with the EMR software than a similar image can be created with any graphic software such as Corel Draw or Adobe Illustrator. The second problem is that for the people that use the authorized printing press created Tamper-Resistant prescription forms – well they can be stolen. I suspect you’ve just rolled your eyes and thought “No Kidding”. But have you ever asked WHY? Well 1 – Security requirements don’t properly address this issue (Commonly it will say “Secure from Theft”) 2 – For the people that are smart enough to put a lock on the paper tray of the laser printer that uses these forms – WELL NEWS FLASH those locks don’t work.
So stop trading one problem for another. Take what you have and fix it. Use preprinted prescription paper and secure them in a laser printer that uses a intelligent paper tray lock system. Now the Pharmacist will feel more confident that he/she is receiving a original.