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| One Thing PAs and NPs Can Work On: Patient Safety By Putting Our Names On The Prescription Bottles |
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by David Mittman, PA - March 21, 2011
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 Provided by Clinician 1
Let’s face it. We PAs and NPs have a problem. OK, many more than one, but I want to address one specific one here. Not all of us, but many of us have it done to us every day and few of us even know its scope. Let’s do something about it this year. Let’s work together on the State level and pass a bill. Let’s make this the year we get our names on the prescription bottles along with our professional designations.
Not a problem you say?
I was at a pharmaceutical conference with people who were looking to reach NPs and PAs. Not just sales people or marketing people but people who were trained to make our patients lives easier, who were trained to give us useful clinical information, people who were trained to work in professional relations. They all operate out of a budget and they complained that they have no way to really know how many prescriptions we write and before their bosses and even the bosses' bosses can allocate funds to NPs and PAs, they need to know that we really do prescribe and what types of products. Sorry to tell you but in few places we are still up to that. I understand their point.
In case you do not know much of the data used by the pharmaceutical companies is collected on only physicians. Most companies use a list of addresses provided by the AMA. They also use a “medical education number” given each physician when they graduate medical school by the AMA. Actually, the entire process of collecting any data on prescribing is physician centric. Even though PAs and NPs have been prescribing in some states for over 35 years, the companies have little ability to know what it is we are doing. They can ask us you might say, but they don’t feel “self-reported” data is as good as actually knowing directly. What this invisibility does is put us behind the eight ball when it comes to our professions getting their fair share of funds at a time that these funds are drying up. I know some of you will say, “big deal” but for our associations and even our own identity it is. Still some of you might not care that we are invisible to the pharmaceutical industry and I understand.
I have a better reason to ask that every NP and PA State organization work together to sponsor legislation to “Put the Prescriber On the Bottle.” Patient safety. With almost 200,000 of us it has become more than a nuisance for us not to be noted on every prescription as the prescriber. Way too often an NP or PA sees a patient and they come back two days later as either we asked them to return or they do on their own and people look at their prescription bottle and send them to see a physician whose name may be noted on the bottle but who never saw them. You know it is hard to take another listen to someone’s lungs to see if the antibiotics worked when you did not listen the first time. This fragments care and is no way to run a medical care system. If I prescribe the drug, I want my name and PA on that bottle. There are many reasons pharmacists do not put it there, but that is another conversation. Let the patient or the system have no confusion about who saw them.
Are we ready to work together on this one? AANP? AAPA? State PA and NP associations?
David Mittman, PA
Physician Associate
 Dave has been a PA, and later NP, leader for thirty years. He strongly believes that NPs and PAs must work together to insure a better future for both professions. Most recently Dave has been busy launching another dream; Clinician 1, the first internet community for PAs and NPs. In October 2008, Dave was honored by the New Jersey State society of PAs with its “Lifetime Achievement Award”.
The viewpoint expressed in this article is the opinion of the author and is not necessarily the viewpoint of the owners or employees at Healthcare Staffing Innovations, LLC.
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| Dave (Livingston, NJ) |
on 27 Mar 2011 at 10:38 am |
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Tracking is only done on physicians. It is done with an "M.E." number issued by the AMA to every physician upon graduation. They also sell every pharma company the database so just there, we would not show up. Yes, locally if a rep actually goes into a pharmacy and checks the local prescribing they can tell if an individual PA or NP is productive but even that is hard as so many scripts are attributed to the collaborating MD.
Point is we may get 10% attributed to us. The pharmacist has to be good and care. When you are busy and feeling stressed that is hard.
NPs and PAs should work together on this.
Dave |
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| Judith Dvorak (New Port Richey, Florida) |
on 27 Mar 2011 at 10:11 am |
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| This can be a real problem. If my protocol physician's name is on the bottle and the medication is not covered by the insurance company, the denial information goes to the MD. Since he is in a different office location, I may never get the information until someone figures out I am the prescriber. The patient is going without medication in the meantime, the pharmacy has to make several phone calls or faxes and the patient gets irritated with me because it wasn't taken care of in a timely manner, so I have to spend time educating them about how the system works (or rather doesn't work). For the life of me, I cannot understand why, when my name is clearly written on the script, the pharmacy would put someone else's name on the bottle. |
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| Patricia Lawson, APRN, BC (NY and FL) |
on 23 Mar 2011 at 3:12 pm |
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| I have to agree with your suggestion, but working in NY since 1992, I was under the impression that pharm. reps who visited our site led me to believe there was a tracking system they used to monitor just what prescriptions I wrote. I thought it was through a pharmacy channel/pathway, but not sure. It didn't make me change my prescribing habits, even though they knew I might not have been writing for "their" product. Keep up the wonderful work you do. |
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