When a VA provider orders a drug for a patient (either through CPRS or VistA), the Medication Order Check Healthcare Application (MOCHA) performs order checks on that drug, and alerts the provider if the drug they are ordering has any of the following anomalies:
Causes an interaction with other drugs the patient is taking
Is in the same Therapeutic Class as other drugs the patient is taking
Is prescribed in a dose that is incompatible with patient factors such as age, weight and Body Surface Area
The drug information used as a basis for these order checks comes from a Commercial Off the Shelf (COTS) product provided by First Databank (FDB) called the Drug Information Framework (FDB-DIF).
Sometimes, the information provided by FDB is not optimal for the VA Providers or the Veteran community they serve. The primary purpose of the Pharmacy Enterprise Customization System (PECS) is to give Pharmacy Benefits Management (PBM) the ability to customize the drug information provided by FDB so the order checks and resulting alerts are based on drug information tailored specifically for the VA.
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