Despite promising potential advantages for patient care as well as cost savings, the medical profession has not been quick to embrace technologies that enable online linkage of prescribing doctors with pharmacies. One reason, according to an article in Medical Economics: fear of liability. The feedback flow of information from online prescribing tends to bring to a doctor’s attention that some patients have been failing to pick up or renew their prescriptions and are thus presumptively noncompliant. Once doctors know that, however, they’re open to being sued later on the theory that they knew of a patient’s noncompliance but failed to pursue him aggressively enough to come in for more counseling, etc. Apparently it’s safer not to know in the first place (Ken Terry, “E-prescribing: The rewards and risks”, Medical Economics, Jan. 4)(via KevinMD).

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