Hospitals are improving their ability to prevent medication errors by enhancing their use of electronic medication safety systems, data from The Leapfrog Group's fall 2024 safety grade report indicates.
As part of the Leapfrog safety grade survey, nearly 3,000 hospitals are evaluated on their computerized physician order entry systems' ability to properly alert and prevent drug errors through simulated testing scenarios. Nearly every year, the patient safety group finds improvements in the electronic systems' ability to catch errors and alert staff, Leah Binder, president and CEO of Leapfrog, told Becker's.
"Hopefully, that means [the systems] are also catching those errors when they could be harmful to real patients," she said. "We're really encouraged to see these kinds of systems now at a far greater functional level, and that is an enormous benefit to patients."
This year, about 88% of hospitals met Leapfrog's standard that measures how well CPOE systems catch common prescribing errors, up from 65.6% in 2018. A similar percentage of hospitals met the group's standard that evaluates the deployment of bar code medication administration systems, up from 47% in 2018.
This isn't a measure of hospitals that use these electronic medication safety systems — most hospitals do. Rather, it captures the percentage of hospitals whose CPOE systems are working as intended to prevent drug errors, based on simulated tests. Leapfrog evaluates BCMA systems based on whether hospitals follow a set of procedures and protocols that ensure proper utilization and prevent harmful shortcuts.
"We put a heavy weight on CPOE and barcoding in the safety grade because [medication errors are] the number one most common error," Ms. Binder said.
After former President Barack Obama's administration signed the HITECH Act into law in 2009, an influx of hospitals and health systems began implementing CPOE systems, but they didn't have a comprehensive way to test systems and ensure they're operating as intended. That prompted Leapfrog to develop a testing mechanism for hospitals, according to Ms. Binder.
Hospitals should never assume medication safety systems are working as intended, she cautioned. To enhance the effectiveness of these systems and support medication safety advancements more broadly, hospitals should routinely test and update them. In cases where CPOE systems fail to properly alert an error, root cause analyses should be conducted to prevent the same issue in future uses, Ms. Binder said.