How many times have you heard that in the past two years?  One time is way too many. So what have you done, to combat the dreaded email that you get from your vendor? You know the one that explains to you that something has gone wrong with one of the many systems that push the e-RX through to the Pharmacy. It may look very similar to this:

“ Dear Valued Customer,
Rx-Company Mail Service, pharmacy benefit manager (PBM), is  experiencing connectivity issues. NewRX messages sent to Rx-Company Mail Service are being rejected with an internal processing error (code 10101010). Rx-Company application and network engineers are working to resolve the issue.
Sincerely, ”

That is just one example of course. I have changed the name and the code errors and underlined the changes to protect the innocent and or guilty. So your Medical Assistant (MA) or your administrator gets this email and immediately notify you. What do you do?

The first thing is to determine if all the Rx being sent out electronically will be auto submitted to the pharmacies.  If not then you will need to get out that old paper prescription pad and start writing.  I would wait to start writing.  You can always have your nurse or MA call in the prescription and or fax it in. At that point just insure that you are still logging in all the medications into the medication tab of your EHR/EMR.

It is frustrating when technology doesn’t work 100% of the time, keep in mind that it’s not always the software, hardware or for that matter the user.  Many things can go wrong at any given point. Communication lines may be down, the hardware or software that supports the communication lines may be down.

Always have a plan “B” backup for the ‘just in case’ moments that it does happen.