Electronic Prescribing: An Examination of Cost Effectiveness, Clinician Adoption and Limitations

E-prescribing has flourished due to the promise of improving efficiency and decreasing prescription errors caused by its handwritten counterpart, yet only 44% of doctor’s offices use paperless prescriptions. Many studies have assessed the value of e-prescribing in the clinical setting, yet there is no all-inclusive summation of these findings. The aim of this study was to review the literature within the last decade pertaining to the cost effectiveness, clinician adoption and limitations of e-prescribing. Journal articles from January 1, 2003 through May 1, 2013 were compiled through use of the search engines: PubMed, International Pharmaceutical Abstracts (IPA), and Google Scholar. A total of 56 peer-reviewed articles were included in this review. Trends show that most clinicians view e-prescribing positively despite some limitations. Limitations of e-prescribing include cost of implementation and maintenance, insufficient training, and lack of standardization. The cost to implement an integrated system with alerts and decision support is $29,000 per physician for the first year and $4,000 every year thereafter. Furthermore, e-prescribing has little disruption to workflow and no statistically significant increase in processing time. Although limitations exist, an expansion of e-prescribing is expected in the future. Efforts should be increased to promote clinicians adopting e-prescribing.