http://twitter.com/#!/drval/status/90178949971316736
This is an interesting piece of news. However, is anyone really surprised by it? Basically it says that when humans enter something, then they are prone to make mistakes. It doesn’t matter whether its on a computer or handwritten. Sounds about right to me. We’re human and we make mistakes.
Of course, the real question is going forward what can EMR vendors and ePrescribing companies do to change this result?
I also wish the study revealed which ePrescribing software had better results.
John, you forget that the big selling point was that e-prescribing would decrease errors.
If e-prescribing is already more expensive for many providers than paper, and they fail to improve the quality of care, why bother?
This study does not suggest that automated prescription systems are without merit compared to manual systems. Rather, it looked at some automated systems and found error rates from 5% to 38%, depending on the system.
Importantly, they did not compare these errors to the error rates from manual systems – at least not in their abstract.
What they do conclude is:
The authors offer targeted recommendations on improving computerized prescribing systems to prevent errors.
Hardly a condemnation of these systems.