Doctors are being rewarded for switching to electronic medical records and computerized prescribing. One of the goals to this component of health care reform is to reduce prescription errors.
A team at Weill Cornell Medical College in New York City tracked mistakes in the prescriptions doctors wrote before, during and after implementing a new computerized system. Approximately 4,000 prescriptions were analyzed. The investigators found that the number of errors dropped from 36 percent to 12 percent one year later.
Although there was a substantial improvement, many physicians were unhappy with the news system because it slowed them down.
[Journal of General Internal Medicine, online, April 16, 2011]
Perhaps it is time to consider patient safety as the number one most important responsibility of any health care provider. Efficiency and speed should always take a back seat to safety. Next time your physician writes you a prescription, especially if it is done on a computer, make sure the doctor does not ignore any safety alerts or drug interaction cautions.
“Alert fatigue” is common and many physicians (and pharmacists) ignore the cautions that pop up on their computers. Read more about this problem here. Always ask if there is a warning you should know about.
