New York has put an end to most paper prescriptions for medicine as the nation's toughest electronic-prescribing law takes effect. As of March 27th, doctors, dentists and other health care professionals now must electronically send prescriptions directly to pharmacies, instead of giving paper scripts to patients. There are exceptions for emergencies and unusual circumstances, and thousands of prescribers have gotten extensions. The law aims to fight painkiller abuse by thwarting prescription-slip forgery, while reducing errors by eliminating sometimes hard-to-read handwriting.

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