The Institute of Medicine recommended today that physicians electronically write all prescriptions by 2010.
In a new report, “Preventing Medication Errors,” the institute also called for the adoption of other forms of health information technology, including electronic medical records and personal health records, to reduce the high rate of medication errors in the United States.
The number of medication errors occurring and their severity are not fully understood, according to the report. However, it estimates that errors -- such as giving patients the wrong medication or failing to recognize that two medications will negatively interact -- cause at least 1.5 million preventable injuries and deaths each year. Nationwide, there is an average of one error per hospital patient per day, the report estimates.
Dr. Albert Wu, a professor at Johns Hopkins University and a member of the committee that wrote the report, described medication errors as a bigger health threat than cancer and said more research is necessary to understand the problem and how to fix it.
The recommendations go well beyond IT. One major theme of the report is a larger role for consumers in monitoring their medications.
But many of the recommendations call for the speedy adoption of health IT tools to minimize error-prone handwritten prescriptions and track a patient’s medications.
“All health care organizations should immediately make complete patient-information and decision-support tools available to clinicians and patients,” the report states.
More than 10,000 prescription drugs and other biological products used in medicine are available, and doctors need help in determining which to prescribe, the report states.
It also calls for the federal government, specifically the National Library of Medicine, to expand consumer information on the Web about medications. The report states that much of the drug information on the Web today is inaccurate or biased.
For the most part, the report does not provide detailed advice on implementation. For example, it notes that e-prescribing requires technology not only for doctors but also for pharmacies to receive the prescriptions. But it does not recommend steps to induce them to install the technology.
Following the institute’s earlier work, the Department of Health and Human Services commissioned the report in accordance with a congressional mandate.
Government Health IT presents Liesa Jo Jenkins, executive director of CareSpark, in this recent eSeminar, where she shared her experiences and insight into building a health information exchange that enhances community health, rewards regional collaboration and drives economic progress.
