The Medicare Improvements for Patients and Providers Act passed by Congress in 2008 has changed prescribing practices in the United States. Electronic prescriptions (e-prescriptions) have now become the most widely used form of prescriptions. The government in fact financially discourages the use of the older more traditional paper prescriptions.

Many emergency medicine physicians fear that this blanket policy is not in the best interests of their unique patient population. It is the belief of many of these physicians that emergency patients are more likely to fill paper prescriptions than e-prescriptions. This theory is predicated on the knowledge that many emergency patients are less established in the system and their visits are frequently rushed, chaotic, and unplanned. For these reasons, the e-prescription system is not ideal for them and the theorized consequence is that many e-prescriptions go unfilled, leaving patients to go untreated.

A retrospective analysis was conducted at the emergency department of the University of California, Irvine Medical Center to identify insured adult patients who were given a non-controlled substance prescription in either the paper or electronic form. Pharmacy claim data to insurances was used to determine whether these prescriptions were filled. 405 encounters were included, 218 of which included e-prescriptions and 187 of which included paper prescriptions.

Our findings showed that paper prescriptions are filled at the same rate as electronic prescriptions (58.3% versus 57.8% p=1). These results were surprising as they contradicted what many physicians believe is the situation. More studies are needed in order to be able to broaden these results to the entire emergency medicine patient population, but these results may begin to alter prescription practices in emergency medicine.