Sending a prescription

Prescribing starts from the patient, not from a separate application. DoseSpot loads inside the chart you're already in, on the patient you're already looking at. On a phone, you can open it full screen in its own tab or choose to use it in Ona instead.

What you can do once it opens depends entirely on which kind of DoseSpot account you were given. A prescriber writes and sends. A proxy prepares and hands off. The screens differ, and it's worth knowing which one you're on before you start typing.

Opening DoseSpot

In the left sidebar, click Patients, then click the patient's name. In the chart sidebar, choose DoseSpot under E-Prescribing. You can also open a visit: in the left sidebar, click Visits, then click the visit and open its DoseSpot prescribing page when DoseSpot prescriber access is enabled.

DoseSpot loads in place. It's normal for it to sit blank for a couple of seconds before the chart appears.

Syncing happens on its own

Open a patient in DoseSpot (in the left sidebar, click Patients, then click the patient's name and choose DoseSpot under E-Prescribing in the chart sidebar). The first time anyone opens a patient in DoseSpot, Ona pushes that patient's details across automatically — you'll see Syncing patient for a moment. There's nothing to press, and no sync step in settings.

Medications and allergies entered in DoseSpot are pulled back into Ona when the DoseSpot frame closes, including when you leave the page, switch patient, change prescriber, retry, close the tab, or reload.

When the patient's record isn't good enough for DoseSpot to accept, you get one of three screens instead:

• "Complete patient profile" — DoseSpot needs the patient's name, date of birth, gender, phone, and a full US address with a two-letter state code. The screen lists exactly what's missing under Required by DoseSpot, and the button opens the patient profile. Closing it retries the sync for you.
• "DoseSpot rejected this patient" — the record is complete but something in it was refused, itemised under Reported by DoseSpot. This is usually a wrong value rather than a missing one — an implausible date of birth, an address DoseSpot can't resolve.
• "Cannot sync inactive patient" — re-activate the patient before prescribing for them.

The demographics matter beyond just opening the chart: they're what Surescripts matches the patient on. A profile that's complete enough to load DoseSpot but wrong in a detail can still return an empty medication history for a patient who definitely has one.

Prescribing as a prescriber

Open a patient in DoseSpot (in the left sidebar, click Patients, then click the patient's name and choose DoseSpot under E-Prescribing in the chart sidebar). On a prescriber account DoseSpot opens straight onto the patient's chart, and you write the prescription there. Ona hands off to DoseSpot for the transmission; DoseSpot sends it to a real pharmacy.

Treat it with the same care as any clinical order — the right patient, the right drug, the right pharmacy. The clinical responsibility stays with you, and once it's transmitted it's out of Ona's hands.

Controlled substances additionally need a DEA number on file (Setting up DoseSpot) and DoseSpot's own EPCS two-factor prompt when you sign. That prompt is required by the DEA and is entirely separate from Ona's own two-step verification — turning one on or off changes nothing about the other (Two-step verification).

Before you write, it's worth checking what the patient has actually been dispensed elsewhere. The same DoseSpot chart holds that record — see Viewing a patient's medication history.

Preparing a prescription as a proxy

Open a patient in DoseSpot (in the left sidebar, click Patients, then click the patient's name and choose DoseSpot under E-Prescribing in the chart sidebar). A proxy account has no prescription queue of its own, so before the chart opens you're asked whose queue you're writing into.

"Queue for which prescriber?" — "What you prepare is staged in their queue for them to review and send." The list is every team member linked as a Prescriber, by name. Pick one and DoseSpot opens.

You choose every time, on every chart. Nothing is remembered, and that's deliberate rather than an oversight: staff routinely cover several clinicians in a shift, and a remembered default is exactly how work ends up in the wrong clinician's queue.

Once DoseSpot is open, a banner sits above it for the whole session: "Queue prescription — queueing for {name}. They review and send it." with a Change button. Read that banner. DoseSpot itself never shows whose queue you're in, so once you're inside the chart, the banner is the only place a wrong choice can be caught. On narrow screens, the banner wraps instead of truncating so the prescriber's name stays visible.

What you prepare then appears in that prescriber's own DoseSpot chart, awaiting their approval. They review it and they transmit it. A proxy cannot send, cannot sign, and cannot prescribe controlled substances — there's no NPI and no DEA registration behind the account to do it with.

When DoseSpot won't open

Open a patient in DoseSpot (in the left sidebar, click Patients, then click the patient's name and choose DoseSpot under E-Prescribing in the chart sidebar). The message on screen tells you which piece is missing:

• "DoseSpot is not set up" — the organisation isn't connected yet. An Owner or Admin completes Settings → DoseSpot.
• "DoseSpot is not set up for your account" — the clinic is connected but you aren't linked. An Owner or Admin provisions you in Step 2 — Provision prescribers and proxies.
• "Could not load prescribers." — you're on a proxy account and Ona couldn't load the prescriber list. Use Retry.
• "No prescribers connected" — you're on a proxy account and nobody in the practice is linked as a prescriber, so there's no queue to write into. An admin links a prescriber first.
• "Could not open DoseSpot" — something failed on the way in. Retry first. On a proxy account you also get Choose a different prescriber, which is the fix when the prescriber you picked has been unlinked since the list was drawn. On a phone, you may also need to choose between Open DoseSpot and Use it here instead before the workspace opens.

For anything else, see Setting up DoseSpot and Troubleshooting.