Increasingly, hospitals are turning to computerized physician order entry systems to cut down on medication errors, but a new report from The Leapfrog Group revealed just how often the technology itself fails and puts patients at risk.
Medication errors are one of the most common mistakes made in hospitals, with roughly 3.8 million patients affected by the errors each year. Since nearly 90 percent of medication errors occur during manual ordering and transcribing, using a CPOE system can help reduce the risk of dosing errors, prescribing drugs to which patients are allergic, harmful drug interactions or dispensing problems.
To reduce errors, a record number of hospitals (1,339) reported to Leapfrog using a CPOE system in at least one inpatient unit in 2014, up from 384 hospitals in 2010. Furthermore, more than half (59 percent) of the hospitals surveyed entered at least 75 percent of all medication orders electronically in 2014.
To examine the effectiveness of CPOE systems, hospitals performed more than 1,200 simulation tests in 2014. The results of the tests revealed more than a third (36 percent) of potentially harmful medication orders entered did not receive an appropriate warning. Additionally, 13 percent of potentially fatal medication orders weren't flagged.
"Hospitals should not assume that putting CPOE in place automatically means their medication program is safe," said Leah Binder, president and CEO of Leapfrog. "On the contrary, while CPOE helps prevent errors, it is imperfect and hospitals need to keep in place the checks and double-checks to make sure patients are not given the wrong medication."
The report is the result of a 2014 Leapfrog Hospital Survey of more than 1,500 U.S. hospitals.
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