Instead of handing patients slips of paper, physicians soon must electronically send orders directly to pharmacies for everything from antibiotics to cholesterol pills to painkillers, with some exceptions. Otherwise, prescribers face the possibility of fines, license loss or even jail.
Because New York’s Know Betters know better.
However.
Digital prescribing thwarts prescription-slip forgery and theft….
They also expose the patient, the doctor, and the pharmacy to hacking. Sort of like an IRS or an OMB hack we all know and love.
There are other downsides.
Patients, for instance, could accidentally have prescriptions sent to the wrong pharmacy or to one that has closed or out of stock by the time they arrive. Instead of taking a piece of paper to another pharmacy, patients have to get the doctor to re-issue the prescription or the pharmacy to transfer it.
It’s also harder for patients to shop around for medication deals when a script is in a pharmacy’s system instead of in hand, says Dr. Joseph R. Maldonado, president of the Medical Society of the State of New York.
And there’s the business of government meddling in a private enterprise’s internal affairs and here interfering with a doctor-patient admin function.
No matter how well intentioned, government cannot be allowed into a private business’ concerns. New York still is being a nanny state.