Colin Banas | Source | Chief Medical Officer at DrFirst

For clinicians already facing numerous pressures, COVID threw gasoline on the fire in terms of emotional burnout and moral injury, with the sheer volume of patients and the conditions clinicians encountered daily. Fortunately, we’ve also seen a significant pivot in the industry within the last three years toward technologies that automate repetitive and monotonous tasks, such as data entry or checking repetitive boxes. This is a key step toward decreasing a rapidly rising cognitive load and freeing clinicians to provide more meaningful and thoughtful care. Artificial intelligence can automatically import and populate patient data in a safe and appropriate format understandable to both humans and computers. These types of automation are proving safer and more efficient in core functions such as medication reconciliation and prescription refills, thus requiring fewer clicks and integrating more naturally into clinical workflows.

Healthcare providers understand that e-prescribing is safer for patients and more efficient for pharmacies and prescribers. Yet, providers often still turn to their prescription pads, phone calls, and fax machines when they don’t have convenient access to their office’s electronic medical record (EMR) system, or don’t have one. In fact, nearly half of Americans receiving a prescription during the pandemic said their doctor gave them a paper script or called or faxed the pharmacy, which is shocking because e-prescribing has been long recognized as the safest way to prescribe.