One way to reduce mistakes is to have doctors enter the prescriptions on a computer instead of with pen and paper. After the switch, hospitals can see error rates drop by a whopping 60 percent.
For starters, the old saw about doctors having illegible chicken scratches is for real. Incomplete and unclear prescriptions, which numbered in the hundreds during the months before the systems were installed, dropped to single digits at both hospitals.
But the computerized systems do more than eliminate poor penmanship. Even the most legible prescriptions can include miscalculations and oversights. A doctor might get the dose wrong, or choose a drug that interacts harmfully with another medication. That's why the computerized systems include data about each patient and a set of rules for proper dosing, allergies and drug interactions. The software gives helpful hints and warning messages to guide doctors' decisions.
On the other hand, the design of the software can introduce errors that would not occur on paper like picking the wrong option from a drop-down menu.
Software design accounted for 35 percent of the remaining errors after the systems were installed. Most mistakes were minor, and many could be prevented by improving the program — say, by putting the most-used options at the top of each menu.
That means the potential of electronic prescriptions is even greater than the 60 percent error reduction seen in the study
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