District Mental Health Program - Prescription Errors [Medication Errors] Electronic Prescription

Prescription Errors [Medication Errors] Electronic Prescription Prescription errors may lead to adverse events which may be largely preventable. A clinically meaningful prescribing error occurs when, as a result of a prescribing decision or prescription writing process, there is an unintentional significant (1) reduction in probability of treatment being timely and effective or (2) increase in the risk of harm when compared with generally accepted practice On the other hand, A medication error is an unintended failure in the drug treatment process that leads to, or has the potential to lead to, harm to the patient. Mistakes in the prescribing, dispensing, storing, preparation and administration of a medicine are the most common preventable cause of undesired adverse events in medication practice and present a major public health burden. Electronic prescribing (e-prescribing) is an important part of the nation's push to enhance the safety and quality of the prescribing process. E-prescribing allows providers in the ambulatory care setting to send prescriptions electronically to the pharmacy and can be a stand-alone system or part of an integrated electronic health record system. E-prescribing also helps to make patient care more efficient. It streamlines the process of getting the prescription to the pharmacy, dispensing the medication, and obtaining refills. Because the patient is not given a hard copy of the prescription, the potential for losing the prescription is eliminated. The instances of pharmacy-initiated clarifications have decreased, reducing the amount of time pharmacists and providers spend on the phone and thus reducing the time taken to fill the prescription and get it to the patient. Increased compliance and monitoring of compliance are also results of implementing e-prescribing. Although it is difficult to quantify precisely the extent of prescription errors, they are frequent and often avoidable representing a major threat to patient safety. While in India prescription errors rates reported in a range between 3% to 45%, which depend largely on defintion of error, study place, IP vs OP basis & types of study methods used. Since prescribing is one of the common tasks in daily general practice, there seems abundant evidence of continuous poor prescribing worldwide. Prescription errors account for 70% of medication errors that could potentially result in adverse effects