side note: Here is one of the many benefits to adopting electronic health records and embracing technology as the country moves forward with healthcare.
NEW YORK (Reuters Health) – Doctors who trade in their prescription pads for electronic prescribing systems may be able to significantly cut down on medication errors, a small study suggests.
Researchers found that among 12 New York State primary care practices, the six that had adopted “e-prescribing” systems reduced their prescribing errors by nearly seven-fold over one year. Errors included mistakes like giving patients the wrong dose, wrong duration of use or incorrect or missing usage directions.
Electronic prescribing has been widely seen as a way to improve efficiency, save money and cut medication errors, such as cases where a pharmacy dispenses the wrong drug due to a doctor’s illegible handwriting. The systems also typically provide doctors with a drug’s allergy warnings, potential for interacting with other medications and other information that could help prevent adverse effects.
President Barack Obama has promoted greater use of e-prescribing and electronic patient records as part of healthcare reform, and the economic stimulus package passed last year included funds to encourage more doctors to adopt e-prescribing — which as of 2009, only an estimated 13 percent of U.S. doctors had done.
But it is unclear how the commercially available e-prescribing systems have so far performed in the real world, in solo and small-group medical practices, according to the researchers on the new study, led by Dr. Rainu Kaushal of Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City.
To study the question, the researchers focused on a dozen small practices in a largely suburban and rural area of New York. According to their report in the Journal of General Internal Medicine, half of the practices adopted e-prescribing systems, while the other six stayed with paper prescribing.
Kaushal’s team found that over one year, the e-prescribing practices cut their average prescribing error rate from 42.5 per 100 prescriptions to 6.6 for every 100 prescriptions.
In contrast, practices that stayed with paper saw their error rate remain nearly the same; at the outset, about 37 percent of prescriptions contained an error, and one year later that figure was 38 percent.
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