E-prescription system malfunctions draw complaints from pharmacy staff
In the heart of modernizing German healthcare, the e-prescription system, intended to streamline the process and provide more convenience, is currently grappling with significant technical reliability issues.
Recent disruptions, outages, and instability in the system have been causing headaches for both pharmacists and patients alike. Pharmacies have reported multiple days of complete or significant system downtime, making it challenging to access or issue e-prescriptions reliably. These issues can have serious health consequences when medications cannot be dispensed promptly.
Key problems include system outages and interruptions caused by failures in telematics infrastructure and trust service providers such as Medisign, affecting digital signatures and access to electronic patient records (ePA). The dependence on external service providers and network operators sometimes results in short-notice maintenance and unexpected disruptions, leading to increased workload and frustration for healthcare professionals, including doctors and pharmacists.
Gematik, the responsible society for the e-prescription system, has acknowledged the issues and has worked to restore services swiftly when disruptions occur. They attribute many frequent outages to problems caused by external service providers and are focusing on improving the reliability of the telematics infrastructure.
Pharmacists and their associations have called on Gematik to urgently improve system stability and reliability given the critical importance of e-prescriptions for patient health. There are demands for Gematik to provide more operational flexibility to pharmacies to dispense medications quickly and unbureaucratically during disruptions when digital services are unavailable.
Health Minister Nina Warken (CDU) has been urged to instruct Gematik to submit a monthly disruption report, and the reliability of the e-prescription system needs to be significantly improved, according to Thomas Preis, head of the Federal Association.
Despite these challenges, the e-prescription system offers benefits such as eliminating manual signatures and trips, and enabling follow-up prescriptions to be issued without a repeat patient visit. The goal of the e-prescription system is more convenience and fewer trips to the doctor's office, with prescription drugs set to be mandatory since January 2024.
In response to the calls for improvement, Gematik is working diligently to address these issues and ensure the system's reliability and stability. However, each time these disruptions occur, tens of thousands of patients are affected, underscoring the urgency of the situation.
[1] German Foundation for Patient Protection press release, [link] [2] Gematik press release, [link] [3] Pharmacist Association press release, [link]
- The e-prescription system's technical challenges, exacerbated by medical-conditions like system outages and failures in trust service providers, have been causing distress for both pharmacists and patients, potentially posing serious health risks.
- As the e-prescription system relies heavily on technology and external service providers, it's crucial for the science community and health-and-wellness advocates to collaborate with organizations like Gematik to improve the system's reliability and ensure continuity of digital services, especially in light of the mandatory prescription drug shift in 2024.
