Hospital Medication Error Initiative

Bar-code technology may help reduce medication errors in hospitals.
The Boston Globe (5/5, Cooney) "White Coat Notes" blog reported that "a new study conducted at Brigham and Women's Hospital found that after bar-code technology was added to electronic medication records, errors in transcribing medication orders were eliminated and errors in administering drugs with potentially serious consequences were cut in half." Investigators "tracked medication administration, timing, and transcription errors in medical, surgical, and intensive care units before and after the new system was adopted in 2005." The researchers found that "the rate of potential adverse drug events fell from 3.1 percent to 1.6 percent with the use of bar codes."
The researchers also "observed significant relative reductions in many subtypes of medication administration errors," MedPage Today (5/5, Frieden) reported. "For example, wrong-medication errors were reduced by 57.4%, wrong-dose errors by 41.9%, and administration documentation errors by 80.3%."
HealthDay (5/5, Reinberg) reported that these "findings are important, because the technology is being considered as a 2013 criterion for meaningful use of health information technology under the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009, the researchers noted."
According to Reuters (5/6, Emery), the researchers wrote, "Given the high number of doses administered and orders transcribed in any acute care hospital, implementation of" this type of system "could substantially improve medication safety."