Checking for Interactions for Allergies and Medical Conditions

When adding medical conditions and allergies to a patient’s folder, do not use entries that have been customized at the pharmacy. Interaction checking cannot be performed on any custom allergies or conditions. Custom entries are flagged as Custom in the List Maintenance Conditions list.

Interaction checking is only performed on the following non-customized Medical Types:

• Allergy Groups
• Medical Allergy
• Condition

For the health and safety of your patients, please refrain from adding CUSTOM allergies and conditions to the List Maintenance Conditions list. Custom entries should only be used for the remaining types of medical items that are not used for interaction checking: Devices, Diet, Health Care Directives, Lab Work, Life Style, Medical Procedures, Non-Medical Allergy, Pharmacy Custom and Reactions.

Additionally, allergy checking cannot be performed against Conditions. For example, the Condition PENICILLIN ALLERGY will not trigger any allergy interactions. Patients with a penicillin allergy should have the Allergy Group PENICILLINS set in the Patient folder. Conditions should only used for actual medical conditions (ex. Pregnancy). For example, a Drug-Medical interaction will appear if you fill a prescription for a blood thinner (ex. Warfarin) for a pregnant patient.

To find patients with inappropriate allergies or conditions, run a Patient List report using the allergy or condition as the report criteria. Use a report period that covers at least 1 year.

Medical Condition Search

When performing a Medical Condition Search in the Patient folder, you can obtain the most accurate retrieval by leaving the Type field blank and only entering a description. Since the descriptions can be listed many different ways in the database, use the wildcard % in the description. For example, to search for everything that relates to penicillin, enter %PENICILLIN in the description field (do not put a space between the % and the word penicillin). The search results will display everything in the list that CONTAINS the word PENICILLIN. When you enter PENICILLIN without the wildcard, the search results will only display items that BEGIN with the word PENICILLIN. Using the wildcard provides you with more options in the search results.

Allergy Group vs. Medical Allergy

An Allergy Group and a Medical Allergy are not the same thing. A Medical Allergy is a specific ingredient, or salt, in a drug (ex. Amoxicillin Trihydrate). An Allergy Group is a general grouping of several medical allergies (ex. Penicillins).

When a patient has a Medical Allergy set, PharmaClik Rx will first check for interactions at the Medical Allergy level. If none are found, PharmaClik Rx will then check for interactions at the Allergy Group level. This ensures that no potential interactions are overlooked, thereby enhancing patient care. For example, if a patient has the Medical Allergy AMOXICILLIN TRIHYDRATE set in the Patient folder and a prescription is filled for APO-PEN VK (PENICILLIN V POTASSIUM) an interaction will appear since both products belong to the Allergy Group PENICILLINS.

Rx Detail

Interaction checking is not performed on prescriptions for free-form drugs or mixtures (i.e. drugs with a negative DIN). An alert appears in Rx Detail, indicating Warning: Interaction checking is not being performed on this DIN/PIN.