Research shows medication prescribing errors can be lowered by as much as 66% when electronic prescribing technology is used in hospitals.
A study from the University of New South Wales (UNSW) reviewed 3291 patient records and examined procedural (incomplete, unclear medication orders) errors, clinical (eg, wrong dose, wrong drug) errors, and assessed the potential severity of the errors (minor to serious). The researchers found that implementing a commercial e-prescribing system led to a decline in overall prescribing errors of between 58% and 66%. More specifically, procedural prescribing error rates decreased more than 90%, and the most serious prescribing errors declined by 44%.
“The study provides persuasive evidence of the value of commercial e-prescribing systems to significantly and substantially reduce a range of prescribing errors,” said study leader professor Johanna Westbrook, from UNSW’s Australian Institute of Health Innovation.
Professor of pharmacology Ric Day, who helped implement a commercial e-prescribing system at Sydney’s St Vincent’s Hospital, said, “From a clinician’s point of view this is an incredible result given the prevalence and the intractability of the problem. It’s even more significant given that we expect to see greater reductions once user support is added to the systems.”
Professor Westbrook said Australian hospitals are only now starting to make multimillion dollar investments in e-health technologies.
“Most of this technology was developed in the US with the big medical centers designing their own customized systems. Hospitals in Australia cannot afford to do that, so they’re taking commercial off-the-shelf systems. We set out to see whether these systems are as effective as the home-grown ones,” Professor Westbrook said.
Professor Westbrook stated that in spite of the significant improvements, the study found the new technology requires changes in the work practices of doctors, nurses, and pharmacists. The system also introduced new user errors.
“e-prescribing systems can be very effective, but we need to monitor them closely,” professor Westbrook said. “They can unwittingly introduce system-related errors such as a clinician accidentally selecting the wrong drug name from a drop down menu.”
“Systems are most useful when they provide user support to guide clinicians in their decision making. The systems we examined had very limited decision support and thus we would anticipate that, with support added over time, even greater reductions in medication errors can be achieved.”
Source: UNSW.