HIQA publishes standards for a dispensing medication note to support safe prescribing
In an important step in Ireland’s eHealth strategy, the Health Information and Quality Authority has published the National Standard for a Dispensing Note including a Clinical Document Architecture specification. This standard will support the implementation of ePrescribing in Ireland.
Multiple standards are required to enable the roll-out of ePrescribing nationally. To support ePrescribing, HIQA has previously developed a data model for prescribed medications and an ePrescribing standard. This new standard supports the sharing of information when a patient is fulfilling a prescription. The standard details the minimum amount of information that should be recorded on a patient summary care record to support the safe dispensing of medication.
HIQA’s Director of Health Information Rachel Flynn said: “These Standards pave the way for improved health services by reducing medication prescription and transcription errors, leading to increased quality and efficiency and safer services for patients. Medication errors are one of the most common adverse events in Irish healthcare, with medication safety incidents accounting for up to 8% of clinical incidents reported to the State Claims Agency. ePrescribing gives health providers an important tool to safely and efficiently manage patients’ medications. The standard published today supports the electronic sharing of information regarding medications dispensed to a patient and provides a mechanism for safely exchanging this information in electronic documents.
Ms Flynn continued “eHealth is an important enabler for transforming healthcare by facilitating timely access to accurate and up to date information is available to clinicians and, as one of the lead organisations in supporting the eHealth vision for Ireland, HIQA is committed to a programme of work that supports its implementation. ePrescribing has been identified as a key priority for Ireland in the National eHealth Strategy.”
ENDS
Marty Whelan, Head of Communications and Stakeholder Engagement, HIQA, 01 814 7480 / 086 2447 623, mwhelan@hiqa.ie
- The eHealth Strategy for Ireland is available online from: http://www.ehealthireland.ie/Knowledge-Information-Plan/eHealth-Strategy...
- These Standards form part of HIQA’s work through its health information function to ensure that high quality health and social care information is available to support the delivery, planning and monitoring of services throughout Ireland.
- This standard was developed through HIQA’s eStandards Advisory Group (eSAG)
- The benefits of electronic transfer of prescriptions and ePrescribing include:
- reduction in manual data entry and therefore transcription errors, resulting in reduced risk of a prescribed medicine being given incorrectly to a patient.
- prescribed medicines descriptions are more accurate and there is improved legibility of prescription details
- prescriptions are dispensed more quickly through more efficient processes
- fewer prescriptions having to be returned to the prescriber for correction because they do not comply with legal or subsidy requirements
- better clinical decision-making, leading to safer and higher quality care, through timely access to selected health information about an individual if the electronic transfer of prescriptions solution is linked to an electronic patient record.
- The minimum dataset for this standard is used to inform the design of a Health Level Seven (HL7) Clinical Document Architecture (CDA) specification. The purpose of the CDA is to support the exchange of clinical documents. This is an internationally recognised standard that has been implemented in many countries. The CDA standard is then used by software developers to create clinical documents that can be safely exchanged between multiple healthcare providers.
- In recent years, HIQA has undertaken multiple projects in the area of ePrescribing and the electronic transfer of prescriptions. An international review of ePrescribing and the electronic transfer of prescriptions undertaken by HIQA showed that in six jurisdictions reviewed, electronic transfer of prescriptions has been successfully implemented at a national level between primary care and community pharmacies.