Computerized Prescribing and Pain Medications

As part of the government initiative to modernize health information recording and exchange , doctors and health care providers are encouraged (with financial incentives) to prescribe medications using the computer.  This “e-RX” system allows you to send prescriptions to the patients’ designated pharmacy right from your computer screen with a few clicks and turns of your computer mouse controls. The only medications you are not permitted to prescribe are narcotics, controlled substances and pain medications with narcotic contents.

At the same time this initiative is occurring, there is a massive crackdown in the State of Florida on prescribing medications for pain. Sloppy legislation in Tallahassee by the State Legislature led to the opening and growth of “pill mills.”   Drug addicts and suppliers from all over the country routinely travelled to Florida to obtain massive quantities of prescription medications from these fraudulent facilities staffed by criminal physicians. The medications ended up on the streets causing numerous drug and alcohol related deaths around the country.

The “sloppy” Florida State Legislature then attempted to rectify the problem by passing new rules and regulations that closed the “pill mills” with the help of the police and drug enforcement authorities but has frightened the legitimate physician population into not being willing to prescribe for legitimate chronic pain. Their actions included updating physicians’ online profile with the state licensing agency to declare whether you write narcotic scripts for chronic pain or not.  If you reply “yes” you are apparently placed on a list of “chronic pain” prescribing doctors that the public can access as well as the criminal elements looking for doctors to write scripts for cash.

At the same time legislation now requires doctors to take specific courses to prescribe some of the newer pain delivery products necessitating the physician to leave their practice to train on the use of the new medications. The result is that legitimate neurologists and anesthesiologists are shying away from seeing chronic pain patients less than 65 years of age even if they have been referred and have legitimate needs for pain medications.

This brings me back to computerized prescription ordering. If you are trying to track narcotic prescriptions, why prevent the doctors from using the computer to prescribe controlled substances?   What is easier to track and trace, a computerized order or a hand written prescription?   It would seem that computerized record keeping through electronic order entry would be the preferred method of tracking narcotic prescriptions.

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