|Articles|June 5, 2000

Are online pharmacies good for your patients—and for you?

Author(s)Robert Lowes

Rogue Viagra peddlers aside, Internet drugstores will have a place in your medical practice, and not just as amazon.coms for pills. They're one more sign that everything in health care is converging electronically

 

Doctors and the Web

Are online pharmacies good for your patients—and for you?

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Choose article section... The advantages of online dispensing Will Web drugstores make more work for doctors? Electronically transmitted prescriptions could boost e-pharmacies

Rogue Viagra peddlers aside, Internet drugstores will have a place in your medical practice, and not just as amazon.coms for pills. They're one more sign that everything in health care is converging electronically.

By Robert Lowes
Midwest Editor

If you've just gotten used to having patients walk into your office brandishing printouts from health care Web sites about how you should treat their hypertension and allergies, brace yourself for the next phase of the Internet revolution. Now patients can get medicines for these and other conditions from online pharmacies—and save a few dollars in the process.

Should that make any difference to you?

In some respects, doctors are bystanders when it comes to online pharmacies. A patient can fill a prescription wherever he wants, and if he goes the dot-com route, that's his business. But physicians should be prepared to advise patients about such pharmacies, and which ones—if any—would serve them best.

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