Handwriting errors are much less common. Patients can ask their doctors if the doctor's office has this available. Hopefully, prescription writing software will become more common in time. Patients can more effectively use the pharmacists' skills in a couple of ways. One way is to establish a relationship with a particular pharmacy and use it for all of their prescriptions.
Drug interactions are a major health problem.
A patient may be seeing multiple physicians who may be unaware of other medications from other physicians. Using one pharmacy to fill prescriptions from many physicians will reduce the chance of an adverse interaction. Another way the pharmacists can help is by suggesting less costly but equally effective alternative medications. There are many classes of drugs that are therapeutically equivalent, but not identical. The pharmacist can consult with the physician to find a less costly alternative medication if costs are a problem.