Outpatient e-prescribing live across Wellington DHBs

NEWS - eHealthNews.nz editor Rebecca McBeth

Outpatient electronic prescribing is live across the 3DHBs in the Wellington region, using indici Single Page Prescribing.

Bay of Plenty DHB also implemented the system on April 21 and the four Northern region DHBs are already using it.

Clinical leads from each of these eight DHBs collaborate on use of indici for outpatient prescribing and potential enhancements.

The NZ ePrescription Service (NZePS) compliant system went live at the Wellington DHBs on January 19, 2022, with a soft roll-out, allowing prescribers to make the transition to use it when they felt comfortable.

After the first six weeks there were around 200 users of the system across the 3DHBs, which has now grown to more than 360.

Community pharmacist and clinical informatician at 3DHB, Annie Joe, says it is great to see new users coming on board every day

The number of scripts sent via the new system is also increasing. Within the first six weeks of go-live Capital and Coast DHB (CCDHB) was averaging 35 electronic prescriptions per day, rising to 85 per day in March.

Hutt Valley DHB also doubled, going from around 10 per day initially to 19 now. Around 5500 prescriptions were created in indici across the 3DHBs from go-live to the end of March.

Joe says they do not know how many outpatient prescriptions are still being done on paper, but at CCDHB, use of prescription templates in the Orion clinical portal has reduced by 53 percent since roll-out.

The templates allow users to create a prescription in the portal then save as a PDF and email it to a pharmacy under a temporary waiver introduced in response to Covid-19, allowing hospitals to use non-NZePS integrated systems. The waiver is due to expire on 17 June, 2022.

Joe says the template system will ultimately be switched off, most likely later this year.

She says moving to an electronic prescribing system like indici allows a dashboard view of the medications that have been prescribed using the system and makes doing repeat prescriptions much simpler.

Being NZePS integrated means prescribers can see if a medication has been dispensed at a pharmacy and a pharmacist can see what has been prescribed online.

Joe says having the clinical informatics team and change manager working in tandem to lead the roll-out has encouraged adoption by making it easy for clinicians to learn about the new system in a variety of ways, including workshops, quick guides and short videos.

The team is keen to get an integration between the new prescribing system and the clinical portal to allow medications for patients being discharged from hospital to feed directly into discharge summaries, allowing use of the system to be expanded.

A Ministry of Health spokesperson says a decision on whether to extend the temporary waiver for non-NZePS signature exempt prescriptions will be made in the month leading up to the expiry on 17 June.

“We have been working closely with prescribing system vendors to encourage them to integrate with NZePS in order to remove the reliance on further extensions to this waiver,” the spokesperson says.

As of 31 March 2022, 67 percent of prescriptions are integrated with NZePS.



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