• 20
  • July
    2011

When e-prescribing first entered the medical scene, it was touted as a quick and error-proof way to get prescription drugs to patients. The hope was that this technology would decrease prescription errors due to the poor handwriting of doctors and rapid pace of pharmacies. In practice, however, e-prescriptions may be less beneficial than healthcare safety advocates had hoped.

E-Prescribing and Medication Errors

Electronic prescriptions enable medical professionals to send information directly to pharmacies with software instead of paper forms. Many doctors and patients were convinced that this higher-tech option was the best way to prevent mistakes. Last year almost 200,000 doctors were using e-prescriptions.

A recent study, however, casts doubt on the effectiveness of e-prescriptions in preventing medical errors. Researchers found an average e-prescription error rate of 11.7 percent with some rates as high as 37.5 percent. These rates make e-prescriptions no more reliable than the handwritten variety.

Four percent of e-prescriptions contained serious errors which could mean significant health consequences for those patients. Crucial medications such as anti-infective and cardiovascular drugs were among those with the highest error rates.

Why Are There E-Prescribing Errors?

While the software is often blamed for the errors, the problem is often that doctors simply don't enter all of the necessary information when submitting an e-prescription. When crucial information such as a dose amount or frequency is left out, it can lead to uncertainty from the pharmacist and potentially cause problems for the patient. Changes to software programs which force physicians to enter all required information may help avoid these mistakes in the future.

Source: 11.7% Medication Error Rate in E-Prescribing