Currently, doctors write your prescription on a pad of paper. They write it in a quick scrawl, to be interpreted by a tired pharmacist. Fairly frequently, some link in this structure breaks down and you get the wrong medication. Sometimes that's fine, sometimes it makes you sick, sometimes it kills you. More than 1.5 million Americans are injured a year due to these errors. All this, in the age of computers and e-mail. In order to get doctors to move away from Bic pens and towards Gmail, Medicare is having to offer bonuses for electronic prescriptions, and many doctors still don't want to comply. It's insane.
