Computerized Drug Ordering Reduces Chemotherapy Errors

Here’s one for The Healthcare IT Guy…

MedPage Today reports that “Computerized Drug Ordering Reduces Chemotherapy Errors.” Some excerpts:

Using the system reduced the likelihood that a child would get the wrong daily chemotherapy dose by 74%, and virtually eliminated the risk of dose calculation errors, wrote Christopher U. Lehmann, M.D., of Johns Hopkins, and colleagues, in the May issue of the Archives of Pediatric & Adolescent Medicine.

The researchers also published a study in the May 8 issue of Pediatric Critical Care Medicine showing that a web-based infusion calculator reduced the number of orders containing errors by 83%.

…The system, described in the Archives [of Pediatric & Adolescent Medicine] study, also helps to reduce errors that arise from clinicians’ stereotypically illegible handwriting by forcing providers to use a drop-down menu for drug selection. To determine whether the system was having its desired effect, Dr. Lehmann and colleagues compared 1,259 handwritten orders with 1,116 electronic orders, and found that after the implementation of the computerized system the relative risk that chemotherapy orders would contain dosing errors was 0.26 (95% confidence interval, 0.11-0.61).