eHealth pharmacy uptake
September 6, 2013
Just 271 community pharmacies
across Australia have registered in
the Personally Controlled Electronic
Healthcare Record (PCEHR)
system, according to a “scorecard”
published this week by the National
e-Health Transition Authority.
That compares with more than
3700 general practices in the
system, and comprises only 5% of
community pharmacies.
Tasmania is leading the nation
with almost half of all pharmacies
in the state now part of the system.
Queensland and Victoria comprise
most of the rest of the registered
pharmacies, with the Scorecard
stating that the concentrations of
participants largely coincide with
“lead eHealth site activity relating
to the National Prescription and
Dispense Repository” (NPDR).
The NPDR went live in parts of the
country earlier this year, and is a
system allowing consumers to have
information on their medications
uploaded to their PCEHR.
Part of the issue with the slow
uptake in pharmacy, according
to the NEHTA, is difficulties
in identifying individual users
of common terminals within
pharmacies, which is a specific
requirement for the PCEHR.
“NEHTA understands that the
Pharmacy Guild has advised
pharmacies outside of the lead
eHealth sites against signing the
Participation Agreement until
systems are in place to allow
individual users to be identified,”
the document says.
Community pharmacy software
which implements NEHTA
specifications is currently available
to about 65% of the market.
And although the volume of
scripts dispensed by pharmacies
using ePrescriptions downloaded
from prescription exchange services
(PES) has been trending up, the
dispensing rate is still “less than
one for every five prescriptions in
the PES,” the report says.
The NEHTA concluded that the
low level of adoption amongst
pharmacies...warrants further
change and adoption focus,
“especially in light of the policy
stance of the Pharmacy Guild”.
The above article was sent to subscribers in Pharmacy Daily's issue from 06 Sep 13To see the full newsletter, see the embedded issue below or CLICK HERE to download Pharmacy Daily from 06 Sep 13
