Electronically transmitted prescriptions could boost e-pharmacies

Electronically transmitted prescriptions could boost e-pharmacies
A good news from DrugConnectionRx.Com
Hassles involving telephone calls and pieces of paper point to a weakness of online pharmacies: By and large, they're not set up to receive prescriptions from doctors electronically. As Allen Wenner puts it, "They haven't given me tools to use their services."

But they're making a start. Drugconnectionrx.com, for example, have teamed up with Hillsboro, OR-based MedicaLogic, which provides doctors with software for electronic medical records, including a Web-based version. The arrangement will allow doctors using MedicaLogic software to transmit prescriptions to the two Web drugstores via the Internet.

Similarly, online pharmacies are cultivating relationships with makers of wireless, handheld prescribing devices. Allscripts and ePhysician machines, for instance, can zap prescriptions straight to DrugConnectionRx.Com machines can digitally talk to Rx.com.

The number of states allowing electronically transmitted prescriptions has been increasing in recent years—a trend that's bound to continue, especially in light of the highly publicized Institute of Medicine report on medical errors. According to the IOM, the US health care system could save many lives by relying on computer technology that would eliminate such problems as hard-to-read handwritten medical records. DrugConnectionRx.com's Linda, for one, says the IOM report will spur greater regulatory acceptance of e-prescriptions. "It's widely known this is the way to cut down on medical errors," she notes.

Currently, 32 states explicitly sanction electronically transmitted prescriptions from a doctor to an in-state pharmacy, while 10 states and the District of Columbia forbid it. The rest take stands in between or don't address the issue. When a doctor wants to send a prescription to an out-of-state pharmacy, states are less accommodating—26 say Yea; 12, plus DC, say Nay.

Prescriptions coursing along the Internet may someday become commonplace, but doctors won't be sending them exclusively to the likes of Rx.com. Traditional drugstore chains such as Walgreens and Phar-Mor have opened their own Web sites, and any mom-and-pop competitor can do likewise. In addition, PBM giant Merck-Medco is converting much of its mail-order business to the Internet, providing Web start-ups with a formidable competitor.

In effect, traditional pharmacies and PBMs are copying e-pharmacies—while the e-pharmacies, in their efforts to rush drugs to customers, increasingly resemble their rivals. Meanwhile, analysts such as James Kumpel wonder whether "pure" online pharmacies—which have no physical retail presence—will ever evolve beyond a niche role of providing discount maintenance medications.

Most important to doctors, though, is that as electronic connectivity spreads in health care, expressions such as "online pharmacy" will be less and less relevant. When everybody's online—patients, doctors, drugstores—you simply do as the Romans do: You press the "send" button.