I recently had an interesting encounter that I wanted to share because I felt that it tells a lot about the value of electronic prescribing (e-prescribing).

I had to visit a doctor about a week ago and he prescribed me some pain medication. I knew my doctor started e-prescribing, so I wasn’t surprised when he asked me for which pharmacy to send my script to. However, this was my first time visiting his office since he started e-prescribing, which for me, was a big relief because I was hoping to spend less time at the pharmacy and making two visits…one to drop off my prescription and another to pick it up…unless I wanted to wait!

So I told him my preferred pharmacy of choice and asked him how long he thought it would take for the medication to be ready for pick-up. He said he didn’t know, but thought that it would probably be ready by the time I left the clinic and got to the pharmacy, which is about 15 minutes. I made sure to check the time, thanked him, and left for the pharmacy.

By the time I parked and got in line at the pharmacy it had taken about eleven minutes, it took another two to get my turn and then about a minute for the pharmacy tech to look up my order and bring me the medication. So the total time I left the doctor’s office until I received the medicine in my hands was a little under fifteen minutes. I am not sure if this could have been faster if I had had the prescription electronically sent to a closer pharmacy to the clinic or not..perhaps that’s another study I can conduct next time!

This encounter was in stark contrast to one in which I had to pick up a prescription for my wife, whose doctor does not e-prescribe. The first step was to drop off the script at the pharmacy, which took about ten minutes in and of itself, as the line for drop-off at the pharmacy had six people in front of me. Then I was told to come back in “twenty to thirty minutes” so it could be processed (which got me to thinking why it takes longer to process a paper script versus and electronic one…the main reason I came up with was that the authentication procedure for electronic scripts, as well as the data entry required for them is faster).

Anyways, long story short, it took a total of fifty-six minutes to process the paper script.

I would definitely prefer the fifteen minute wait time versus the fifty-six minute wait time any day, and I am sure almost everyone else would to. It was an interesting experience to test out first-hand, and I am glad I got to experience it because it proved that e-prescribing is a lot more convenient for the patient!