Index

• Sections
  • Avoid "free text" medications
  • Do not exceed character limits
  • Avoid adding new pharmacies
  • Send to pharmacies that accept electronic prescriptions

You can take simple, proactive steps to help ensure that prescriptions sent electronically through ICANotes ePrescribing partner, DrFirst, reach the destination pharmacy in their intended electronic format rather than as a faxed copy or, worse, not received at all and marked "undeliverable." Of note, as of January 1, 2017 the state of Louisiana mandates that any prescription transmitted by means other than digital, electronic format must feature a manual signature meaning that faxed prescriptions through an ePrescribing solution will no longer be accepted.

Here are some helpful tips to avoid both faxed and undeliverable ePrescriptions:

Avoid "free text" medications

Always select medications presented to you as choices rather than the free text options that are permitted. All free text medications will trigger an automatic fax transmission. When creating a new prescription, as you type in the name of the drug you will see available options from the database to pick from. Select one of the available options first

Then select from the available dosages. Avoid using the “free text” option.

You can distinguish free text medications from recognized medications by the red pill alert to the left of the drug name in the prescribing widget:

You can also distinguish a free text controlled substance medication when viewing a pending prescription if you see the red text “(free text)” next to the sig, in place of indicating the actual schedule classification of the medication (ie. SCHEDULE II or SCHEDULE IV or C-II)

For comparison, the same drug has been prescribed here, first with the properly entered drug name and dosage, and second with the free-texted option with displayed warnings

Do not exceed character limits

Any prescription that has excessive characters (greater than 210 characters for Directions to Pharmacist or greater than 140 characters for Directions to Patient) will trigger an automatic fax transmission.

Avoid adding new pharmacies

Prescriptions sent to manually added pharmacies will trigger an automatic fax transmission. If you are having trouble finding a pharmacy that you know to exist simply use the first letter of the pharmacy name and the zip code as your search criteria. Refrain from adding new pharmacies to your practice list.

Send to pharmacies that accept electronic prescriptions

Be sure to send prescriptions, where possible, to pharmacies that accept electronic prescriptions.

[C] indicates the pharmacy accepts controlled substance prescriptions electronically

[E] indicates the pharmacy accepts electronic prescriptions

[R] indicates the pharmacy is a retail pharmacy

[MO] indicates the pharmacy is mail order

If ever you aren’t certain what a type/code refers to, simply hover over it with your mouse to view a quick tooltip describing the feature:

ICANotes will help identify manually entered pharmacies within the Medication Entry window when in the Work Areas or a prescriber note. Clicking the "Pharmacy Information" button will expand a popover to display the patient's previously used pharmacies through e-Prescribing. Any pharmacies highlighted in yellow are identified with a high probability of having been manually entered.