ePrescription Service to cover controlled drugs

NEWS - eHealthNews.nz editor Rebecca McBeth

The ePrescription Service is being expanded to include controlled drugs and increase the period of time covered by a single ePrescription.

The Covid pandemic significantly increased use of the NZ electronic Prescription Service (NZePS). The number of eScripts issued rose from around 620,000 in March 2020, to more than 1.5 million in March of this year.

However, the service could not be used for the prescription of any controlled drugs such as morphine.

Health Minister Andrew Little announced at a Digital Health Association (DHA) event in Parliament on August 24 that prescriptions for controlled drugs will no longer have to be in hard copy, with a physical signature.

“We will, finally, be able to say goodbye to fax machines,” he said.

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Prescribers will also be able to increase the period of time covered by an ePrescription for medicines for some chronic conditions like ADHD.

The Minister said more details would be in place on these changes by the end of this year.

Pharmacy Guild of New Zealand chief executive Andrew Gaudin says the guild welcomes the announcement, which will ultimately see the phasing out of fax machines from the prescription process.

He says this will streamline the prescribing process and make it more secure, with encryption and traceability, as well as easier and more convenient record storage.

“It’s also a positive move for our members, saving them and their staff time as they won’t need to reconcile faxed or emailed scripts for controlled drugs with the original, wet-signature copy from the prescriber, as is currently required,” says Gaudin.

However, he said the move to e-prescriptions has transferred the cost of printing scripts from prescribers to pharmacies.

“Paper copies are still required for annotations through the prescribing process in the pharmacy dispensary for audit purposes, and the posting of these paper copies for Ministry of Health storage,” Gaudin says.

“Ultimately, we would like to see electronic annotations introduced, removing the need for paper copies all together, saving pharmacies time and money.”

Community pharmacist and clinical informatician at Capital, Coast, Hutt Valley and Wairarapa districts, Annie Joe, says the change will be a huge time saver for hospital prescribers and administrative staff as they will no longer have to print, sign, email, and post prescriptions.

“This enables our staff to spend more time with the patient and on clinical work,” she says.

Outpatient electronic prescribing went live across the Wellington region earlier this year and Joe envisaged the announcement encouraging more prescribers to use the system.

“This will enable us to go paperless with our outpatient prescriptions and enable prescribers to prescribe remotely, without needing a printer and scanner,” she explains.

Joe adds that community pharmacists spend lot of time on administrative tasks in relation to controlled drugs.

“This has been a long-awaited announcement where changes to the legislation are finally ‘catching up’ with the technology,” she says.



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