New York City Doctors will say Goodbye to Traditional Handwritten Prescription

Doctor's handwriting will not be an issue to most of the patients in New York State. Beginning on March 27, the state will require doctors to electronically send their prescription directly to the pharmacies instead of writing it out on paper.

The new law was designed to cut down prescription-drug abuse, fraud and reduce errors due to misreading the doctor's handwriting. New York State will be the first state require electronic prescription and penalize the doctors who will not comply. Although Minnesota requires electronic prescriptions, it does not penalize doctors who are still using pen and paper, as reported by New York Magazine.

The new law is the second major component of I-Stop, a state law that was signed in 2012, which is designed to cut the prescription-opium abuse. The law will not allow the doctors to prescribe a controlled medication without initially checking the online registry.

The registry has the records of all the controlled medications that have recently prescribed to a patient. With this, the doctor can see the patient's medication history and spot if there is a potential drug abuse. However, a report says that the system is not foolproof and the patients can just misspell their name to mislead it.

Aside from the doctors, patients will also face a culture change in the state as they can no longer shop around for the best price for their medications. The transition was set to take place in 2015. However, the state lawmakers delayed it due to security issues, which are obviously, not resolved yet, according to New York Times.

"There should really be no reason that a doctor shouldn't have had ample time to get it up and running," said Dr. Joseph R. Maldonado, president of the Medical Society of the State of New York.

However, many institutions are still waiting until the law is fully mandated. Only around 60 percent of the state's estimated 100,000 prescribers were able to send electronic prescriptions and around 50 percent were set up for controlled substance prescription which needs an extra security step.