Explore Their Answers

Dr. Soreya Dhanji
Family Physician

This is a great question! There isn't a standalone portal for generating prescriptions independently of an EMR system. This means that to use PrescribeIT for e-prescribing, it needs to be integrated with an existing EMR.

The seamless integration with various EMRs (instead of a separate website login) actually offers several significant advantages. Firstly, it streamlines your workflow. By integrating directly with your EMR, PrescribeIT allows you to manage patient records and prescriptions in one place, without the need to switch between different systems or interfaces. This can save valuable time and reduce the risk of errors that can occur when transferring information between separate platforms. Another key benefit is the absence of an additional login process. In a busy clinical setting, having one less login to remember is more convenient and improves workflow efficiency.

Dr. Soreya Dhanji
Family Physician

Thank you for your question! A patient's prescription history is an important part of being able to provide exceptional care for both a physician and pharmacist.

When a physician sends a prescription to a specific pharmacy, PrescribeIT facilitates the secure digital transmission of a prescription from an electronic medical record (EMR) to a pharmacy management system (PMS.) The patient’s prescription history is stored in the physician’s EMR and in the pharmacy (PMS) where it remains confidential.

It's important to note that all personal health information is maintained in accordance with all provincial, federal and legal regulations. By facilitating secure electronic prescription transmission, PrescribeIT contributes valuable information to the prescription histories in the EMR/PMS, and aims to streamline healthcare processes, improve patient outcomes, reduce errors, and enhance medication management for both prescribers and pharmacists.

Dr. Soreya Dhanji
Family Physician

Unlike the uncertainty with faxed communications, electronic prescriptions are sure to be delivered to the pharmacy.

When a prescription or refill request is sent to the pharmacy, a 'Dispense Notification' is sent back to the physician when the order is processed through the pharmacy system. If a patient does not pick up the prescription and the order is cancelled in the pharmacy system, a 'Cancel Dispense Notification' will be sent to your EMR.

If a clinical communication is sent to the pharmacy regarding a certain patient, there is no way to determine if it has been read as there isn't a "read message" notification. To ensure your clinical communication sent to a pharmacy has been received, I will end my message with "please confirm receipt of message" and the pharmacist will often reply that my message has been acknowledged.

Dr. Soreya Dhanji
Family Physician

This is a great question, especially in light of rising clinic overhead costs. Currency, Infoway works with each province to implement PrescribeIT through Health Canada funding resulting in no fees for physicians or pharmacies to use PrescribeIT in their practice. Nominal transaction fees will be implemented for pharmacies when the service reaches scale and only after significant stakeholder consultation. If you want to register to use PrescribeIT, the registration process is easy! Simply fill out the registration form and a member of the PrescribeIT team will be in touch.

Dr. Soreya Dhanji
Family Physician

The goal of PrescribeIT is to increase the efficiency of current clinical workflows and reduce the pharmacy-related administrative burden. However, if you feel that PrescribeIT isn't the right fit for your workflow, you can deactivate it. Of note, even while PrescribeIT is activated within your EMR, you will always have the option to use your previous prescribing workflow instead of utilizing PrescribeIT. As every clinic has its own way of managing prescriptions and pharmacy communications, PrescribeIT can be integrated however you choose. You can choose to use the electronic prescribing feature or utilize the clinical communication tool based on your preference. If you are having difficulty navigating PrescribeIT within your EMR, there are detailed training materials and support from the PrescribeIT/EMR team available.

Dr. Soreya Dhanji
Family Physician

Thank you for this question! Clinical communication is an efficient and secure way to communicate directly through your EMR with the pharmacist to provide patient/medication updates, ask clarifying questions, discuss medication questions and align on patient care-related activities. It's a fantastic tool to streamline communication between physicians and pharmacists to optimize the patient's care.

For physicians using Telus Health's MedAccess, to send a clinical communication, you access the patient's chart, and create a new task. You can then select "Clinical Communication," the preferred pharmacy, write your communication, and press ‘Send.’ The response will return as a Task. However, sending a clinical communication varies slightly between EMRs. Reach out to the PrescribeIT team who can provide you with the appropriate how-to documents.

Dr. Soreya Dhanji
Family Physician

Hello! I appreciate this question as it's important for both prescribers and pharmacies to understand how e-prescribing is implemented within our health care system. Currently, Infoway works with each province to implement and scale electronic prescribing using PrescribeIT through Health Canada funding. Fees will be implemented once the service reaches scale and only after significant stakeholder consultation.

Currently, there are two funding models that exist in jurisdictions with existing and mature electronic prescribing models (the United States and throughout Europe). In one model, jurisdictions cover the cost of the service as part of the health ministry mandate. In another model, pharmacies are responsible for the nominal fee. This alternative funding has demonstrated an increased use of e-prescribing through increasing physician adoption of the process.

Dr. Soreya Dhanji
Family Physician

This is a great question as it's so important to be on the same page with our clinical team regarding patient medication changes. This improves safety and reduces medication errors for the patient. In order to keep the pharmacy updated on medication changes or discontinuations, you can initiate a Clinical Communication to send to the pharmacist. A simple message stating that the medication is discontinued would be the documentation that the pharmacy requires to discontinue the prescription in their pharmacy medication system. It's very similar to writing an order in a hospital setting informing the other clinical team members a medication has been stopped. Thank you for your question!

Dr. Soreya Dhanji
Family Physician

Thank you for your question! PrescribeIT is designed to be a two-way communication system between physicians and pharmacies regarding specific patients. The open lines of communication between the prescriber and pharmacy help to reduce error, increase communication efficiency, decrease redundant faxes, and clarify medication instructions pertaining to individual patients. As the pharmacy communications are regarding specific patients, there isn't a way to broadcast a general message to all pharmacies.

Dr. Soreya Dhanji
Family Physician

With PrescribeIT, the goal is to have e-prescriptions seamlessly integrated into your EMR so they can be addressed during your day-to-day workflow and provide flexibility as to when to address the prescription requests. Urgent renewals can be addressed remotely at any time, while non-urgent renewals can be addressed as part of day-to-day work (similar to the previous fax-based environment). Physicians can work with their EMR provider to ensure they have remote EMR access when appropriate to meet their patient’s needs (labs, notes, prescriptions, etc).

Prescription requests sent electronically allow patients the reassurance their request has been received by their physician. However, as e-prescribing becomes more widely adopted, it's important that both the pharmacist and physician work together to educate our patients that e-prescriptions do not equate to being an "instant" process. 

Dr. Soreya Dhanji
Family Physician

Thank you for raising a very important question! There is no fee for physicians or any prescribers to use PrescribeIT. Currently, there is no fee to pharmacies today for the service due to funding from Health Canada. In the future, a nominal transaction fee will be applied to pharmacies for new and renewal transactions. With more transactions, the less the cost will be for all pharmacies. The transaction fees for pharmacies will only be implemented after extensive stakeholder communication. PrescribeIT's goal is to drive down the cost of the service over time.

Dr. Soreya Dhanji
Family Physician

Thank you for your question. PrescribeIT is an e-prescribing service that works with a pharmacist's pharmacy management system and the physician's electronic medical record. If you would like to encourage your physician or pharmacist to subscribe to PrescribeIT, please direct them to this link.

Great question! Whether it’s to follow up with the pharmacist about a patient or ask a general medication availability question, 2-way communication with pharmacists is an important piece of patient safety. It also allows for efficient communication between both parties without having to rely on fax on being on hold on the phone. The message is stored as documentation within the chart.

To send a message to a pharmacist using PrescribeIT, the pharmacy must be PrescribeIT enabled. This information can be found in the Provider Registry tab in the address book. Hint: these pharmacies display an eRx icon in the third column of the address book.

To send a message to the pharmacy that is not regarding a specific prescription:

1. Go into the patient’s chart and start a regular message by pressing ‘Ctrl + M.’ Then address the message to the preferred pharmacy.
2. Select the urgency of the message in the ‘Due Date’ box. If you want it to be flagged to the pharmacy as urgent, please select ‘As Soon As Possible.’
3. Write your communication in the message box and press ‘Send Message.’

To send a message to the pharmacy regarding a patient’s medication:

1. Double click on the medication and choose ‘Clinical Communication to Pharmacy’ which opens a message box.
2. Ensure the message is going to the preferred pharmacy in the ‘To’ box.
3. Select the urgency of the message in the ‘Due Date’ box. If you want it to be flagged to the pharmacy as urgent, please select ‘As Soon As Possible.’
4. Write your communication in the message box and press ‘Send Message.’

Let me know if you have any more questions!

Dr. Soreya Dhanji
Family Physician

Thank you for your question. PrescribeIT is an e-prescribing service that works with a pharmacist's pharmacy management system and the physician's electronic medical record. If you would like to encourage your physician or pharmacist to subscribe to PrescribeIT, please direct them to this link.

https://www.prescribeit.ca/get-started

Dr. Soreya Dhanji
Family Physician

In general, a pharmacist can send any patient renewal request or message to any clinic. The matching of patient names occurs on the side of the EMR, in this case within PS Suite, and not on the pharmacy PrescribeIT side.

Once the renewal or message has been sent from the pharmacist, then the EMR tries to find a patient match. If a match is not found, PS Suite identifies the renewal request or message for the unmatched patient with a “??” in front of the patient’s name. When the request is then opened, a link that says “identify” appears next to the patient’s name which can be clicked (either by the intended prescriber or admin) to help select the correct patient from the EMR.

Hopefully, this answers your question from the clinic side of PrescribeIT. If there are further questions, please reach out to your technical support as there may be other factors at play for your specific case.

Dr. Soreya Dhanji
Family Physician

Thank you for the great question! As physicians, delegating certain tasks can be an important part of our practice. At this time, delegated prescribing is not supported. PrescribeIT specifications are developed based on the EMR's ability to support licensed prescribers. However, the PrescribeIT and Accuro specifications are still in development and expected to be deployed later this year so I am unable to provide a more detailed response at this time.

Dr. Soreya Dhanji
Family Physician

EMR integration of PrescribeIT is an essential factor to ensure efficient workflow and prescription documentation. There aren’t any extra login requirements to use PrescribeIT within the EMR so it integrates seamlessly within each medical record system. With this integration, the prescriber can send electronic prescriptions and pharmacy clinical communications within the regular EMR workflow.

PrescribeIT is integrated into the following EMRs: EMR Advantage, Microquest, Oscar Pro, P&P data, Telus Health

The following EMR vendors are in the process of conformance: Accuro, Indivica, Juno, Medfar, Mustimuh Information systems and Omnimed. 

Visit https://www.prescribeit.ca/about-us/working-together to keep up to date with conformed EMR.

If an EMR is not on the list, the user can contact PrescribeIT to request more information on how it can be incorporated.

Dr. Daniel Pepe
Family Physician – Past Peer

Thank you so much for your question! At this point, PrescribeIT does not support the ability to send a message to another provider on the platform. We are able to send messages through PrescribeIT to pharmacies as that supports the e-prescription flow.

Dr. Daniel Pepe
Family Physician – Past Peer

This is such exciting news, but Shoppers Drug Mart is now starting to go live across Canada including Alberta & New Brunswick with other provinces to join in soon!

Learn more here.

Dr. Daniel Pepe
Family Physician – Past Peer

Thanks so much for this question!

I have asked this very question myself and Canada Health Infoway has informed me that a PrescribeIT locator map with the data you are hoping for will be live in February on PrescribeIT.ca and we will be sure to share it once we have it!

Dr. Daniel Pepe
Family Physician – Past Peer

Thank you for this important message. Pharmacy prescription requests via PrescribeIT do not need to be stopped while away on vacation. A locum can still process the requests in the EMR on your behalf, and then send the responses to the pharmacy via fax. If the locum is PrescribeIT enabled, they would be able to process and send the requests via the service. In both cases, the locum would just need access to where you normally receive PrescribeIT messages (i.e., EMR inbox).

If available in your EMR, using the “away” or “vacation” setting will ensure the locum receives your PrescribeIT notifications while you are away.

Dr. Daniel Pepe
Family Physician – Past Peer

Thank you for your question!

I can tell you that my current experience is only that I receive messages in my inbox when there is a prescription renewal request. Outside of that the only time I receive messages are if a medication is unavailable or if I have not completed a prescription or included a limited use code. In each of these cases, PrescribeIT is substantially more efficient than fax-based communications.

Ultimately, I think a short trial period between yourself and physician colleagues would be the best as it would allow you to actually experience the workflow. From my experience, this product saves time and effort!

Dr. Daniel Pepe
Family Physician – Past Peer

One of the challenges in Ontario and other provinces is that if we want to send a prescription directly to a pharmacy at present, we rely on fax. A challenge I have encountered is that this often means - failed faxes, multiple faxes back and forth for clarifications when a dose is increased/ decreased and challenges when patients are due for an early release or should not have medications released early.

I’ve found quite frankly that patients who have prescriptions filled by PrescribeIT are much safer than our current framework for the following reasons:

• All drug data is transmitted electronically and not just an image as in a traditional fax
• I’ve never had a PrescribeIT transmitted script used twice. And frankly, this is impossible. PrescribeIT transmitted scripts are sent once, to a single pharmacy and are always received.
• We also receive dispense notifications of when a script was filled, this option has not been available to us before. It provides enhanced safety as I can be certain when a prescription is dispensed — the information I’ve never had before.

Dr. Daniel Pepe
Family Physician – Past Peer

With regards to the prescriptions going through the MOA this is very common and the default workflow in nearly all offices in Ontario. This has not been an issue for us at all for a few reasons:

• MOA’s no longer receive, scan/ file, label and message physicians for prescriptions
• Renewals are processed simply using an “approve” or “approve all” button by the physician which saves time in having to select individual medications
• Lastly, the cost of faxing has been reduced as I now receive 40-50 less fax pages per month (a small but a noticeable improvement which will increase when adoption increases).

Please consult this document to learn more about PrescribeIT for TPP Alberta.

Dr. Daniel Pepe
Family Physician – Past Peer

For the first few months of using PrescribeIT I had my colleague cover my practice by faxing prescription requests even though I am utilizing PrescribeIT. I wouldn’t consider this a barrier but would love to clarify this if you have more questions!

Dr. Daniel Pepe
Family Physician – Past Peer

Thanks so much!

When I started to use PrescribeIT in my office I was the first to add the service. Other physicians were not signed up for PrescribeIT in my office at the time and did not need to use it. Needless to say, quickly after I adopted PrescribeIT there was a wave of other physicians in my office who followed. There are no issues with your colleagues using the fax in your EMR. We continue to use fax and PrescribeIT alongside each other as many services still require a fax.

There is no charge! Let me know if you have more questions. Over the weekend I had two consecutive days where all prescriptions were sent through e-prescribing and it took about 50% less time than it currently does for me using a traditional fax.

Dr. Daniel Pepe
Family Physician – Past Peer

Yes, it is incredibly helpful especially when you are away from the office. PrescribeIT ensures that the prescription arrives without question when you are at home or away from the office and don’t have time to deal with failed faxes. It’s also incredibly helpful when we receive requests from pharmacists as we don’t need to read what the fax says and then prescribe the medication. We are simply given the option to approve the script and send it off. When I am processing my own prescriptions I usually tackle the PrescribeIT renewals first as they are the fastest to do!

Dr. Daniel Pepe
Family Physician – Past Peer

With regards to the technology used, PrescribeIT is different from a regular fax which is sent from the primary care provider to the pharmacy as an image which is then re-entered at the pharmacy. With PrescribeIT we are sending actual prescription data to the pharmacy reducing the risk of medication errors but removing a traditional data entry step that pharmacists would need to carry out. The other nice thing is that the data which is sent does not end up in a stack of paper where it may be visible to individuals who are not prescribers or the pharmacists. As such there is an added layer of security. Lastly, Health Canada has provided seed funding to launch PrescribeIT which will subsidize the cost of the technology for several years.