E-documents in he alth care: e-prescription and e-referral is the popularization of digital e-he alth services. The implementation of this solution brings many benefits to doctors, pharmacists and patients. So why is it worth setting up an Internet Patient Account? Rafał Janiszewski, the owner of the Advisory Office providing services in the field of he althcare organization for he althcare entities and patients' rights, tells about it.
Anna Tłustochowicz: First, a perverse question: Why do we need these e-prescriptions and e-referrals? We are used to paper versions. Who bothered this? Some people's virtual world is terrifying!
Rafał Janiszewski:Introduction of e-documents means thatthe information contained therein is stored in the public system.Thanks to this both pharmacies and clinics, as well as the patient himself, have access to them. When we talked about the hospital treatment information card, i.e. discharge from the hospital, we said that not all patients keep these documents. On the other hand, we left traditional paper prescriptions in pharmacies. Now no information is lost anymore! When we come to the doctor, we appear in another he alth care facility, we continue the treatment -our history can be seen in the system.So collecting data on the drugs that are prescribed for us and referrals to hospitalizations or treatments protects this information so that it is available now and later.I encourage all patients to set up Internet Patient Accounts (IKP).Thanks to them, we can not only have access to the history of our treatment, see, what services we used, what medications and in what doses we had prescribed and what we bought, but also when the doctor issues us a referral, we can see them there.
What if we don't have an Internet Patient Account?
Then the doctor who issues us an e-prescription or e-referral is obliged to print it!We receive the information on paper that we need to complete the e-prescription or e-referral . Having an e-prescription number and providing the pharmacist with your PESEL number, we are able to buy your medications without any problems. However, having IKP is easier. We receive the information via SMS, and then this SMS is enoughshow at the pharmacy and our prescription is processed on this basis. This is undoubtedly a good solution.
Certainly modern.
Certainly.It is convenient for the patient,because, first of all, he does not have to have the prescription with him, so he does not have to worry that he will lose it, for example, or at least pour coffee …
Or it turns out to be illegible! It often happened that pharmacists worked hard to figure out what the doctor had prescribed for us.
So we have another advantage. What are the others? Well, the e-prescription has been structured in the system so that if we have several drugs on it, and - as we all know perfectly well - it often happens that in a given pharmacy all of them are missing, we do not have to leave them there anymore. prescription and come to buy her the next day, when the drugs are brought for us. Now, in a given pharmacy, we can buy one drug and it will be "ticked" in the system, and then go to another pharmacy, where the pharmacist will see in the system what we have already bought and what we still need and he will calmly give us the rest of the drugs, if he has them, of course . This is certainly a simplification for patients.Talking about the e-prescription, however, it is impossible to ignore the whole benefit it is for IKP patients.Buying the drug is one thing. But what about the dosage?
In our Online Patient Account, at any time,we can check how we should adopt the prescribed specifics.
During teleportation, when talking to the doctor, we see on our account that a prescription appears there with recommendations on how to take medications. We should also remember thatin IKP, we can also have our children's accountsassigned to them and conveniently check information about their treatment there. This is a really cool, handy info on what medications were prescribed for the whole family.
And what do we get from the fact that the referrals are now online as well?
So far, when we received a referral, either to a specialist clinic or to a hospital, we signed up there first, e.g. by phone, and then we had to provide a paper referral. Within fourteen days. The same is true if we were admitted to the hospital by a doctor during the visit! Back then, we also had to physically deliver the documents there. This created difficulties for the patients. Let us remember that these hospitals are often located outside our place of residence. Some of the patients sent referrals by post. There were complications with this. Now there is not! The facility that registers us by phone sees us in the systemour e-referral and does not require anything more from us.
So all you have to do is call and make an appointment?
Call or come and make an appointment. We provide the PESEL number, the referral number and that's it.Paper referrals were sometimes problematic just as the prescriptions:were sometimes incorrectly issued, incomplete or illegible. With e-referrals, there will be no such problems.
For example, when we come to the hospital unconscious?
Of course. IKP is still expanding, among others precisely so that every clinic that will have contact with us could use the full knowledge base about our he alth condition. Our memory can be unreliable! We don't have to remember all visits to the doctor and all the medications prescribed to us, do we? Now you don't have to bother with it anymore.These data will be collected by the system.And please also note that IKP gives the patient the possibility, for example, to consent to the fact that specific people are informed about his he alth in the hospital or to be issued with his documentation medical.
E-referrals will not be lost, they will not be destroyed.
In our IKP, we will be able to check which hospital or treatment, which specialist clinic we were referred to in 2022, in a year, in two and ten years. This data will remain.
The traditional referrals haven't completely disappeared though, have they?
True.E-referral is not currently issued to a he alth resort or sanatorium, for drug and rehabilitation programs, and to a psychiatric hospital.In these cases, we are still issued a paper-based referral.
Why ?
It's just a matter of time. Ultimately, e-referrals will also appear here. By the way, I would like to remind readers that we do not need a referral at all to some specialists, namely a gynecologist-obstetrician, oncologist, venereologist, dentist and psychiatrist.
And if we are already talking about e-documents in he alth care, will this trend continue?
Certainly yes! Our system is becoming very computerized.From July 1, all institutions report the so-called medical events : any disease that is detected in the patient, any medical service that is provided to him. All this is reported to the central database, thanks to which the IKP will contain more and more information about the patient. And this is undoubtedly a move in a very good direction!
It is in our best interest to haveinformation about when and for whatwe were sick and how we were treated and what medications were we takingso that it could all be found quickly and easily.
From what you say, the e-revolution is doomed!
I have no doubts thatthe system will be more and more digitized , and consequently more and more information about us will be transferred to the central database. Today, more and more results of our research go there. And just imagine that in some time your editor will do a blood test and you won't have to keep the results and go with them in the briefcase to the next doctor, because he will open the knowledge base about the editor and see everything there immediately.
I see a lot of advantages of e-prescriptions and e-referrals, but I want to remain an advocate of people who are not necessarily "digital" and "internet".
For them, it is always the support that I talked about: in the form of paper versions of various documents that doctors will print for them. Which does not change the fact that these documents will be simultaneously issued in e-form. They will appear in the system, but for the convenience of this part of patients, and for their peace of mind, they will still be printed for them.
At this point, I would like to appeal to children, grandchildren, to support their parents and grandparents in establishing IKP.
The older generation is really doing great today and uses smartphones on a daily basis!And the only problem may be the creation of an Internet Patient Account.So let's help in this first step, And then, when grandfather or grandmother receive an SMS e-prescription, they will certainly handle this SMS perfectly in the pharmacy and will not have to worry about where they will put the prescription. However, I would like to mention another group of people who may be skeptical about e-documents today. I mean people who feel insecure about the security of their data, have a sense of ubiquitous surveillance …
Meanwhile, you say that the state is gathering more and more information about their he alth!
Exactly! And the state keeps this data. And if someone is afraid of the security of their data, it is harmful to not establish IKP. This data is collected anyway.So if some citizens want to control what data is collected about them, the more they should have access to IKP!There are also people who question whether the specialist clinic whether they were given proper assistance or whether the hospital actually did everything for which the hospital then "took money from the Fund". Pleasevery much: you can see everything at IKP. And if it turns out that there is an item: hospitalization, surgery, advice, which we would not have been given, then we click on a special link and describe what, in our opinion, is inconsistent with the facts. However, all those of our readers who are "internet" and "digital", but somehow still do not have time to set up IKP, I appeal:Do it today!This is a really important thing. We never know when we will need this account, and when it does, we may not actually have time to bother setting up an account. The reality around us is changing a lot.
The conclusion of our conversation may undoubtedly be the statement that e-prescriptions and e-referrals are changes for the better.
These are changes for the better. And IKP is a change for the better!
I repeat: the reality around us is changing andwe should, for our own good , adapt to this reality in order to be able to fully benefit from it.
Finally, I will vividly say this: e-prescriptions, e-referrals andIKP it is as if someone had built a beautiful bridge over the river for us today . And we have the choice of either crossing it, or standing on the banks of that river and nodding, "But they built a mighty bridge," and then walking for miles trying to walk around the river.
Expert
Rafał Janiszewski, owner of the Advisory Office providing services in the field of he althcare organization to he althcare entities
Speaker, organizer of many trainings and conferences on he alth protection and patient rights. In the years 1998-1999 an employee of the Office of the Government Plenipotentiary for the Implementation of the General He alth Insurance. Author of over 20 books on he althcare organization and he alth care financing standards. In 2005-2007, he was an expert of the Presidium of the Parliamentary He alth Committee, as an advisor on he alth services. Co-author of the general study as part of the Pharmaceutical Pricing and Reimbursement project for the European He alth Commission.
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