Pharmacist Marie-Claude Lacourse estimates that the number of faxes she receives in her pharmacy has doubled since the pandemic.
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“It’s ridiculous”, plague the pharmacist met in her pharmacy in La Prairie last week when she came to look at the pile of faxes entered … during her day off.
According to her, the telemedicine set up at the start of the pandemic allowed patients to avoid systematically going to the doctor, but it caused a jump in prescriptions sent by fax.
“Before, it was around 40%, now it’s more like 80% who come by fax,” she says, adding that all this paperwork exasperates her staff.
However, the government had committed to ending health faxes by 2023, a promise that cannot be kept.
A post office box
In addition to prescriptions, the pharmacist receives requests by fax for examinations such as endoscopies on behalf of patients.
“We are like a big post box,” she illustrates.
Over the past ten years, she has changed devices three times in addition to increasing her visits to Bureau en Gros for paper and ink refills.
The pharmacist believes that the only solution is complete computerization of communications in the network. A colossal task.
“The systems [informatiques] don’t talk to each other,” she said.
Last year, the Government of Quebec announced the establishment of the Prescription-Quebec project aimed at better computerized sharing of prescriptions between different actors in the network.