Active Medication Allergy List – Keeping Patients Safe
When you're sick or injured, it is a comfort to know that there are plenty of qualified doctors, nurses, and hospitals that are ready to evaluate your condition and help you to recover as fast as possible. In America, we are currently experiencing a period of health care reform, which is designed to make health insurance more affordable for millions of hard working Americans, as well as improve the way that health care professionals record and share information about medical histories when they are diagnosing a patient. While we count on doctors and the medicines that they prescribe, it's important to realize that without an active medication allergy list, it is hard to use these tools responsibly.
Although you might not think about it very often, your medical history is one of the most important documents in your life. Divided amongst every doctor, emergency room visit, and prescription that you've ever experienced, this chronological record of your overall health is used by every physician that you visit to determine proper medications and treatment plans in the future. Many hospitals and doctors' offices are still utilizing inefficient paper records that are not easily shared between health professionals, as well as patient disclosures which can be inaccurate, to determine which medicines are best. Unfortunately, without an active medication allergy list, medications are often prescribed incorrectly.
One of the provisions of the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009 was funding for hospitals and other health care institutions that were willing to make the steps to implement electronic health record systems, like an active medication allergy list, which would allow information about medication allergies as well as potential drug to drug interactions that might put the patient in jeopardy instead of helping them to get better. These lists would allow doctors and patients to chronicle their prescriptions and allergies, so that doctors would have one central place to retrieve this information.
The benefits of an active medication allergy list are many, including more accurate prescriptions for those that are ill, as well as avoiding potential complications that could come from unknowingly prescribing a patient something that they are allergic to, or that might interact with medicines or herbal supplements that they are currently taking. This type of medication list will also help pharmacies to detect potential over prescribing that might occur because patients are interested in selling their medications on the black market.
