11.7% Medication Error Rate In E-Prescribing

http://www.medicalnewstoday.com/articles/230296.php

The chances of mistakes occurring in prescriptions sent electronically are no lower than in those written out by hand, a researcher from Massachusetts General Hospital in Boston wrote in the Journal of American Medical Information Association. This will be a disappointment for health reform experts and policymakers who assured that E-prescribing would have fewer medication errors, as well as saving the government billions of dollars.

Author Karen Nanji, M.D. explained that new technology does not in itself eliminate the risk of medication errors.

In 2008, Nanji and team evaluated 3,850 electronic prescriptions from three pharmacy chain outlets in Florida, Massachusetts, and Arizona over a four-week period. They all came from outpatient computerized prescribing systems at non-hospital doctors' offices. The prescriptions were checked for medical errors by a clinical panel. They also determined whether any of the errors could potentially harm patients.

11.7% of all the prescriptions had some kind of mistake. Four percent of them had mistakes which could cause a significant or serious adverse event. The researchers added that this is no better than the error rate found in handwritten prescriptions.

more at link...
Pretty scary stuff. Make sure you ask about the meds and the rest before you leave the drs. office.

Since according to the article, the chance of error is "no lower" (other articles say, "the same as") than hand-written prescriptions.

When prescribed a medicine, a patient should always:

Ask exactly what the medication does.
Ask about drug interaction with both OTC and any other prescription medication.
Ask for the name of the drug, spelled out by the doctor - and the generic name of the drug, as well.
Ask for an explanation of the dosing instructions.
Ask about food restrictions and/or interactions.
Ask what constitutes a side-effect serious enough to worry about.

Patient's should also take advantage of the service most pharmacists offer, explaining much of the above . . . but really, the doctor should be the one doing the explaining.

It might take five more minutes of the their time, but it is their responsibility - and the patient's - to be fully informed. Doctors should have a copy of the Merck manual in their office, if not in the examination room. No one is asking them to memorize the damn thing, but they should at least know how to look it up.

All you have to do is read it. But they will answer questions, too.

Not hard getting info off the internet as well.

for many months, my cardiologist's e-records had me taking synthetic estrogen (instead of synthroid -- damn autocomplete). Being a 48-year old guy not going through any kind of gender re-assignment, you'd think that would set off some alarm bells.

that have to catch the errors.

I'm sorry that e-prescribing hasn't done a better job with this. In fact I'm surprised since the software that generates the prescriptions is programed to catch errors and dangerous interactions. This is puzzling.

I didn't expect one. Humans are flawed, and computers are used by...humans! :rofl:

...and makes no reference to what vendor's system(s) were used.

E-Prescribing comes in several flavors....



Most hospital-based systems (Epic, Cerner, GE Medical, Siemens, etc.) have comprehensive checking against age, sex, body weight, allergies, other meds, vitals & fluids, etc.


More basic systems are often implemented in many doctor's offices. Pysicians are unwilling/unable to afford the systems with more comprehensive utilities, but rather are looking for anything that will save them time - or make them money. For example, at one point the only checking in the AllScripts system was checking to see if the drug being ordered was in the physician practice's inventory so they could dispense it inhouse and profit from the sale.

(edited for spelling)

It's harder for a patient who doesn't understand script shorthand to tell if there is something wrong with the type of med, dose, or other qualities of what he just bought at the pharmacy. Here's a handy reference guide to deciphering scripts at about.com:

http://healthinsurance.about.com/od/prescriptiondrugs/a/understanding_MD_Rx.htm