State Senator Jeffrey Klein released a report yesterday that estimates pharmacist send New Yorkers home with the wrong medication or dose 210,000 a year – a mistake that could result in injury or death.
Klein is pushing for electronic prescribing, which he says would eliminate confusion over messy handwriting. And he’s proposing that the state begin tracking prescription errors.
“There has to be a better way,” he said. “We need to make sure prescription errors are tracked, broken down, and disciplinary actions taken against those wrong-doers.”
(Source: NY1)
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8 Responses
A lot of these errors result from doctors famously poor handwriting (filling out prescriptions that pharmacists have trouble deciphering.)
They had to study this?! I could have told them and they could have saved time and effort. When the Docs write worse than nursery students and the pharmcist is left to decipher what was written, this is a problem.
According to the AMA’s own very conservative figures, almost 100,000 people are murdered by doctors through neglect and sloppiness each year.
The system is all screwed-up. the mechanical approach to healthcare (diseasecare?) is obsolete and needs to be completely reworked.
Yup, we learned in school about 7000 ppl DIE every year from out patient medication mistakes- hopefully things will get better soon b/c a lot of states are trying to pass legislation to mandate prescriptions to be typed etc. that would help a lot b/c a lot of meds sound and look- in print- so similar ex: lamisil and lamictal, quinine and quinidine, omacor and amicar etc- these mistakes are fightful, and potentially fatal, and I think the slopiness factor cleaned up will help to cut down on these awful mistakes.
The pharmacy industry should go electronic but if you think you will not have to use your brains after going electronic then think again!
Working in the pharmacy industry for many years, we had every prescription go through checks and double checks and then through an electronic program and there was still a 40% errors!
Machines do not make mistakes humans make mistakes!
There was a case of a patient that recieved enema and the script read put two drops in the eye twice daily! The most common mistake and deadly mistakes to this day are doctors writing the wrong strength. (mg)
I urge anyone ever needing a medicine to READ the bottle AND look at the pill to make sure you are recieving the correct medicine and correct instructions of when and how to use the pills.
Most pills you need to take during meals etc.
READ EVERYTHING and ASK questions.
You can also google the name of your meds and you will see the picture and correct number which is stamped on all pills.
DO NOT TRUST your doctors when it comes to writing prescitions they make plenty of medical mistakes but love to blame errors on the pharmacist and everyone else but themselves.
Electronic Rx’s? How do you guarantee it is actually coming from a legitimate medical office? Will there be an audit trail for investigators to follow?
there is always an audit trail to follow- electronic rx does not mean that you don’t need the doc’s id# etc- every time a doc prescribes a scheduled med, it’s noted, and can be traced. Yeah, musicoutlet, I don’t think that it will eliminate consumer negligence, but we have to do our part as the medical profession to write NEAT and clear prescriptions to at least cut down on the number of fatalities. There will always be ppl who who give thier kid aspirin or OD on otc meds, but we can’t help stupidity- we can only help by “doing no further harm”…
Thanks for the information on pharmacists. Wow, 210,000 a year!?
We recently wrote an article on pharmacists at Brain Blogger. Though pharmacists don’t have official “prescribing power”, most medical and surgical teams have a pharmacist on hand. Does their position in the medical food chain give them a power equivalent to that?
We would like to read your comments on our article. Thank you.
Sincerely,
Kell