Decreasing Medication Errors

Decreasing Medication Errors by the Addition of Electronic Medical Records

Karalee Ann Mlack

Northern Kentucky University

Decreasing Medication Errors by the Addition of Electronic Medical Records

Medical errors are considered widespread and extremely costly to the overall healthcare system. $1.6 trillion dollars is spent on healthcare by the United States and Americans spend more on medical treatment than any other country in the world, yet they experience more medical errors than any of the other industrialized nations in the world. (Crane & Crane, 2008). It is estimated that in the U.S. medical errors cost over $37 billion dollars each year. In addition, medical errors kill between 44,000 and 98,000 individuals (Crane & Crane, 2006). Part of this cost and the deaths that occur are due to medication errors. Medication errors can lead to longer hospital stays, increased comorbidities, and even death. Patients receive the wrong medications due to documentation errors, missing information, and miscalculations. Over the past few years the government has required hospitals and physician offices to implement electronic medical records (EMR) and in doing so, they offered incentives. By the government requiring the addition of electronic medical records into the health care setting it has decreased the number of medication errors per patient. In this paper, it will be discussed how the EMR is continuously helping to reduce errors.

Medication errors occur in 1 of 5 doses that are administrated to patients. This then translates into approximately two errors per patient during any given day (Coyle & Heinen, 2002). It is estimated that 9.7% of individuals that are involved with an adverse drug event (ADE) results in disability. Also, they are twice as likely to experience death (Mazer, Deroos, Hollander, McCusker, Peacock, & Perrone, 2011). “The Institute of Medicine (IOM) estimates 1.5 million preventable ADEs occur annually, costing $3.5 billion per...