Most hospitals across the country have software systems in place to prevent patients from doctor shopping, but according to a new study, many of these computerized systems don’t pick up on incorrect or unsafe prescriptions. A survey conducted by the Leapfrog Group, a nonprofit organization that rates hospitals on patient safety, found that hospitals failed to flag nearly 40% of harmful drug orders.
Nearly 1,800 hospitals across the U.S. were involved in the survey. Leapfrog asked them to enter medical information for fake patients and then submit prescription orders to see which ones got flagged. Not only did the hospitals’ software systems fail to detect 39% of potentially harmful drug orders, nearly 13% of these errors could have potentially killed patients, according to Leapfrog. These errors included prescriptions for the wrong condition, incorrect dosages or not recognizing harmful interactions with other drugs.
Other organizations have also recorded similar results. According to 2015 data from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality, 5% of patients in U.S. hospitals have suffered some form of harm because of prescribed medications, and in half of these cases, it was avoidable. However, prescription errors are not always dangerous, according to Erica Mobley, Leapfrog’s director of development and communications. For the errors that are missed by hospital computer systems, hospitals often have other precautionary measures in place to catch missteps before prescriptions reach patients, she said.
Prescribers are not always open to using these software systems, as one study from Johns Hopkins University revealed last year. The March 2015 study highlighted the fact that although nearly every state has a prescription drug monitoring program, only 53% of doctors said they used it. More than half of doctors who did not use the drug databases cited time constraints as the main issue, while others reported that the system was not easy enough to use. But among those who did utilize prescription drug monitoring databases, 98% reported that they found it to be useful, and that it even helped them cut back on prescribing opioid medication.
The Leapfrog survey illustrates the limits of technology that have yet to be resolved. Current computerized systems can be helpful to some, but overall, they have some ways to go before they can be considered the standard. “Technology exists to help with detecting medical errors at the point of when you’re entering drug orders in the hospital or health care settings,” said Jesse Pines, director of the Office for Clinical Practice Innovation at George Washington University. “But they’re not perfect. They still need a lot of work.”