Sign a prescription and then FAX

[Guest guest]

I am hoping one of my very smart colleagues can help me out here.

For a bunch of prescriptions (schedule III think ) you had to have the provider SIGN the script before it was faxed  to a pharmacy.  For the last two years, despite having an EMR for many of those scripts (ambien, lyrica, vicodin) we had the extra pain of having to PRINT those RXs so I could sign them, then have a staff person fax them to the right pharmacy. This is painful and often things get lost of the faxes don't always go through.

I was under the impression that we just had a better EMR that could incorporate my signature or way for me to sign on the computer it could be auto-faxed through the system to the pharmacy (or through an e-scribe).  But in my own experiments I know hear that it was the DEA that insists that everything get printed and signed for the schedule III.

There are some nifty programs for ipad which can do scripts and let you sign them on the screen--and then fax them over the internet 3g or wifi-- (Can you sign stuff online in practice fusion?)-- would that be ok or is it STILL a violation since I did not physically print and sign it?