Prescribers and their patients can now use PBS’ electronic Pharmaceutical Benefits Scheme.
Electronic prescribing is simple, you ditch the paper entirely. You send a prescription directly to an online server, which a pharmacy can access to dispense the medication to the patient. The patient will receive a token, either in paper or digitally (sent via email or text), that contains a GR code, which the pharmacist can use to find their prescription.
Once a prescription is dispensed, the system will keep track if it is a once-only prescription or not. If the prescription has repeats, the patient will receive a new token, for future use.
Benefits of going digital
For GPs, electronic prescribing means that transferring a prescription to the pharmacy is an efficient and secure process, reducing the chance of falsifications or errors, maintaining privacy of personal information, and eliminating the need of manage paper prescriptions. Using this system also aligns perfectly with the delivery of telehealth services and with efforts to protect community members and healthcare providers from COVID-19 and other infectious diseases.
For patients, going digital means that they no longer need to worry about losing or misplacing their prescription.
Electronic prescriptions are not mandatory, and patients should be given the choice to receive either an electronic or paper prescription from the GP. However, they cannot have both – a patient must receive either a paper or electronic prescription.
What you need to go digital
Any GPs wanting to implement electronic prescribing in their practice need to comply with certain requirements. For example, you will need the appropriate software in place and ensure that your patients’ preferred pharmacies also have the required software to dispense electronic prescriptions.
Here are some key steps that you need to take before using electronic prescriptions:
- Ensure your practice has a Healthcare Provider Identifier-Organisation (HPI-O) and can connect to Health Identifiers Service. If you don’t have an HPI-O, go the this website to register.
- Your practice must be connected to an open prescription delivery service via a prescription exchange service, such as eRx and MediSecure.
- Ensure your patient’s information is updated
- Check that your clinical information system has the capability of joining electronic prescribing. You can check with the website of the Australian Digital Health Agency (ADHA) for more details about electronic prescribing and for a list of approved software.
If you have any questions, you can reach out to ADHA through these channels:
Phone: 1300 901 001 (8am – 5pm (AEST/AEDT) Monday – Friday)
Email: help@digitalhealth.gov.au