Summary
Wake-up Call Statistics on medication-related errors and adverse drug events (ADEs) are alarming: * According to the Center for Information Technology Leadership, roughly 8 million Americans experience outpatient ADEs each year, roughly 3 million of which are preventable, most by electronic prescribing. * According to the Institute of Medicine, preventable prescription medication errors injure more than 1.5 million Americans and contribute to the deaths of 7,000 each year-the equivalent of one plane crash every week. * According to a recent report from the National Council on Patient Information and Education, only about 50% of Americans faithfully take their medicines as prescribed, resulting in roughly $177 billion annually in direct and indirect costs to the U.S. economy in terms of increased incidence of hospitalization, death, and disability. * According to a September 2007 report in the Archives o1 Internal Medicine, during calendar years 1998 through 2005 there was a nearly three-fold increase in both the number of serious ADEs (from 34,966 to 89,842) and fatal ADEs (from 5,519 to 15,107) that were reported voluntarily to the PDA. Initial projects being considered will aim to: * demonstrate and enhance the advantages of e-prescribing and EMR technology, in terms of their ability to improve medication safety, encourage medication adherence, and reduce labor and overhead costs for both physicians and pharmacists; * determine how comprehensive information related to a patient's medication history can be best used to improve the relevance of drug-drug and drug-allergy alerts, and evaluate the impact of a nonadherence alert for specified patient populations; and * evaluate how technology can be leveraged to improve outreach to patients to increase drug adherence (through the use of refill reminders, personalized educational materials, periodic messaging alerts, etc.).
See the full content of this document
Extract
A Rx to Improve Medication Safety
The casual scribbles that pass for handwriting and the extensive use of abbreviations, acronyms, and shorthand dose designations in many doctors' offices are more than just a nuisance for patients. Rather, these medical hieroglyphics often are to blame for routine miscommunications with pharmacists-miscommunications that too often lead to medication errors related to the drug name, proper dosage, and instructions.
Making matters worse, more than 12,000 prescription drugs are on the market, and many have look-alike and so...See the full content of this document
Sponsored links
