Physicians Get Help in Safe Medication Prescribing

This article informs how Duke University Hospital and McKesson have developed a solution to simplify complex drug dosing. McKesson has announced the introduction of its new Advanced Dosing functionality for Horizon Expert Orders, McKesson's clinical decision support (CDS) and computerized provider order entry (CPOE) system to help increase the accuracy and safety of medication prescribing for high-risk, complex patients.

Duke believes that the Advanced Dosing solution can aid pediatric and neonatal units where specialized approaches to weight and age-based dosing are required. Small miscalculations in these units can cause significant problems. Inputting relevant criteria into the system at the time of ordering reduces the cognitive burden on prescribers. This burden has been created from the increase in number of drugs along with the increasing volume and complexity of drug information. These systems span virtually all settings of healthcare and are used with more than 50 million clinical transactions per week. McKesson has lead major breakthroughs in patient safety and was the first to introduce a point-of-care-bar-code medication administration solution which prevents more than 700,000 medication errors weekly.

As an employee of McKesson, I am a close witness of what amount of energy and focus is directed toward these information systems. We are constantly educated and trained on how these systems can benefit hospitals. I have had a few clients that have purchased these systems and they feel that have made a good investment. Here is a link to where I point my clients in regard to our patient and medication safety products.

http://www.mckesson.com/en_us/McKesson.com/For%2BHealthcare%2BProviders/Hospitals/Patient%2Band%2BMedication%2BSafety/Patient%2Band%2BMedication%2BSafety.html

Our Horizon Expert Orders™ software solution was created by clinicians for clinicians to specifically address the common barriers to physician adoption of computerized physician order entry (CPOE), focusing on the clinical decision-making process instead of order entry. McKesson’s Horizon Expert Orders solution features proven clinical content driven through a simple clinical interface and intuitive workflow that supports the way physicians practice medicine. The benefits from this systems include; overcoming traditional barriers to physician adoption, delivering real-time clinical decision support, and improving patient safety.

Physicians Get Help in Safe Medication Prescribing. (3 March). Business Wire. Retrieved May 14, 2008, from ProQuest Newsstand database.

Can Information Systems Make Your Doctor Better?

1. What problems are hospitals and physicians encountering in diagnosing diseases and prescribing medications? What management organization, and technology factors are responsible for these problems?

Many doctors struggle to identify diseases or misdiagnose patients. Substantial drug errors resulting in injury to over 1.5 million Americans. These drug errors include drug interactions, inappropriate prescriptions and forgetting secondary prescriptions. These preventable drug errors may result in $3.5 billion in additional billing annually to patients. Many of these errors can be attributed to human errors including; poor handwriting, memory lapses, fatigue, distractions and the total volume and complexity of available medications. Some information systems used to prevent these errors actually create new ways of making errors because of their design.


3. What obstacles prevent computer systems from improving the medical industry? How can these obstacles be removed?

One obstacle includes designing the information systems too much for physicians rather than nurses, who feel the greater impact from these systems. Designers of these information systems must acknowledge who will be utilizing the systems most frequently and accommodate these nurses. Another drawback of these systems are that they can be more rigid than traditional paperwork, not allowing a physician to write orders until a patient is admitted. Duke has addressed this problem by adding a new unit to the system that permits virtual admissions of patients.

Doctors and nurses must trust the system and not ignore automated prompts, which can be another obstacle. Many doctors resist the idea of needing help remembering procedures and treatments. To remove this obstacle, medical staff need to be informed of the accuracy of these systems and be educated on the time-saving component of these systems. Finally, some doctors argue that Diagnostic Decision-Support systems have not proved to be more successful than human diagnostics. They also grown at the cost and time involved with these systems. Physicians need to be provided with a ROI calculation and all the data that proves that these systems can prevent errors, which ultimately saves lives and money.