High medication errors lead to call for electronic prescribing

Medication errors harm at least 1.5 million people every year and lead to $3.5 billion in additional medical costs, according to a report from the Institute of Medicine released on July 20.

The report calls for a series of steps to improve interaction between patients and healthcare organizations, including electronically written prescriptions by 2010.

The report found that 400,000 preventable drug-related injuries occur each year in hospitals, 800,000 in long term care settings and 530,000 among Medicare recipients in outpatient clinics.

The study finds that paper-based prescribing is associated with high error rates, so it promotes electronic prescribing, which eliminates hand writing errors and automatically alerts prescribers to possible interactions, allergies and other problems. It says that by 2008 all healthcare providers should make plans to write prescriptions electronically and by 2010 they should write them and pharmacies should be able to receive them.