Improving Medication Safety with Computerized Prescription Ordering

According to the Institute of Medicine, medical errors cause 98,000 deaths each year in the United States. This prompted a nationwide call for better patient safety. With prescription drug use on the rise, medication safety is a high-profile priority. Dr. Beth Devine, with the Pharmaceutical Outcomes Research and Policy Program (PORPP), leads a study to understand how computerized prescribing in a clinical environment improves medication safety and patient outcomes. The Everett Clinic writes more than 2 million prescriptions a year and wants to reduce the number of prescription errors. Its strategy includes a state-of-the-art ambulatory computerized prescriber order entry (APCOE) system, which Devine is helping to evaluate. She has partnered with the clinic on a multi-year project to measure whether and how APCOE cuts down on medication errors and the resulting adverse drug events. Until now, most computerized prescribing studies have been done in large hospitals, so Devine's research findings will be useful to thousands of doctors and healthcare professionals who prescribe drugs for patients in ambulatory clinics.