Updating a Patient’s PharmaNet Information - EPNMP.03

Authorized health care providers can update their patient’s PharmaNet medication profile to ensure it provides the best possible information to all care providers.

The PharmaNet patient medication profile may be updated to:

• add a clinical condition;
• add an adverse drug reaction;
• add a comment to an existing adverse drug reaction; and
• flag a dispense record as discontinued if the medication was dispensed by your practice.

Information regarding adverse reactions and clinical conditions remains on the patient’s PharmaNet profile permanently (that is, this information is not removed during the archiving of medication records older than 14 months).

Having this information in PharmaNet improves patient safety by making the information available to health care providers in all care settings, including other medical practices and hospitals.

Adverse Reactions

All adverse drug reactions entered are automatically sent to PharmaNet.

Things to keep in mind:

• Adverse drug reactions cannot be changed or removed; you can only add a comment to relay a change. 
• Adverse reaction can be inactivated by patients, doctors, pharmacists, patient’s representative and others. The options are listed on the removal form. This must be done by contacting the Data Quality team at the MoH (see section PharmaNet Data Quality Support EPNMP.10).
• Comments can be added only by someone at the same location that submitted the original adverse reaction information (that is, you can cannot update an adverse reaction recorded at another location).
• Adding a comment to an adverse drug reaction replaces any previous comment.
• To update an adverse drug reaction recorded at another location, contact that location and ask them to add a comment to the patient’s PharmaNet profile.

Clinical Conditions

Clinical conditions that may be important information for other health care providers should be added to the patient’s PharmaNet profile; however, it is important to understand the limitations of this information:

• Clinical conditions remain on the patient’s medication profile permanently; you cannot remove or update the information if the patient’s condition changes. To provide further information on a condition that has changed you can resubmit the same condition with a comment stating the change.
• To have a clinical condition removed, the patient must contact the Data Quality team at the MOH (see section PharmaNet Data Quality Support EPNMP.10).

HIV Medications

If you have a patient enrolled in the HIV Drug Treatment Program through the BC Centre for Excellence in HIV/AIDS  (BC-CfE) you will have to follow the processes defined by the BC-CfE and submit a paper HIV Drug Treatment Program Prescription.  You may document the prescription information in your POS application, but you must not send the prescription to PharmaNet. For reasons of patient confidentiality, the BC-CfE does not enter the related dispenses on PharmaNet.

If you are prescribing HIV/AIDS medications that will be dispensed at a community pharmacy, there is no special form required; the prescription is sent to PharmaNet where it will be available for dispensing by a community pharmacy of the patient’s choice. These records will appear in PharmaNet.