The Pharmacy of the Specialties Office of the Dr. Gustavo Fricke Hospital in Chile has enabled the delivery of medicines through electronic medical prescription.
The Fricke Hospital belonging to the Health Service of Viña del Mar-Quillota, has begun to implement the electronic prescription to dispense drugs to outpatients.
Ángela Cabello, head of the pharmacy, explained the new characteristics of the medicine delivery process at the pharmacy: “the doctor now has a computer in his office and from there he accesses a computer system that indicates the name of the medicine that the patient, as well as the dose and some special indication.
In this way, the pharmacy receives the information and prepares the medicine to have it ready for delivery to the patient. In this way, the new process shortens waiting times in the preparation of drugs.
The head of pharmacy explained that the main benefit of this electronic prescription system is medication safety, since it is read as it is and as it is written and there are no interpretations of the name of the drug and the amount required. Similarly, there are no problems with prescriptions lost by patients, since the information about your medication is already in the pharmacy, and you only have to go to it and request your medications by showing your identification.
Likewise, Daniela Cruz, a pharmaceutical chemist at the Fricke Hospital pharmacy, pointed out that in order to make the delivery of the medicine a safer and easier process to understand, the drugs are delivered with a label "in which the name of the patient appears, the name of the medicine, the monthly amount that should be used and the particular indications of the medicine, very clear and detailed so that the patient understands them”.
However, there are exceptions among the medicines that can be delivered through this electronic medical prescription. For example, psychotropic and narcotic drugs, by regulation, can only be dispensed by delivering a paper prescription, written by the doctor in a special format. Apart from this example, the other medicines can be delivered through the electronic prescription.
Users have shared that the electronic prescription system is more practical “because with only the RUT (Unique Tax Roll) one withdraws the medicines. Before, one would forget the recipe or my mother would lose the recipe," explained user Cristian Vásquez.
