Mistakes should be considered shared commodities and used for all they're worth, researcher says

Doctors are famous for sloppy scribbling — and handwritten prescriptions lead to thousands of medication errors each year. Electronics to the rescue: U.S. hospitals that switched to computerized physician order entry systems saw a 66 percent drop in prescription errors, according to a new review of studies.

Defining what constitutes quality care—especially in a large, urban hospital—isn’t easy.
University of Cincinnati (UC) researchers, however, are addressing the nationwide problem with a unique system to reduce medical errors and improve patient care in local hospital emergency departments.

When medical residents work shorter hours, fewer patients are transferred to intensive care and there are not as many interventions by pharmacists to avoid errors in medication, according to a Yale School of Medicine study in Annals of Internal Medicine.

"The American College of Physicians (ACP) is greatly encouraged by the introduction of the 'National Health Information Incentive Act of 2007'," ACP President Lynne M. Kirk, MD, FACP said today. "Increased use of health information technology (HIT) could greatly benefit health care in the U.S. through improved patient care, reduction in medical errors, higher efficiency, and potential long run cost savings."