Chemconsult® online flags some worrying prescription error rates
Desensitised data from 2204 Chemconsult® consultations across the Health Information Pharmacy group’s pharmacies to 30th October 2008 have flagged some alarming error rates on prescriptions coming into HIP pharmacies.
Almost one in four prescriptions checked (24%) showed that the drug dose was incorrect for the patient’s age or weight. Potential consequences of this range from drug overdose to a dose being too small to have any impact on an infection. One in sixteen prescriptions (6%) were found to have a potential interaction with another drug the patient was taking. If these errors had not been picked up in the pharmacy the consequences for the patient could have ranged from minor inconvenience to hospitalisation or even death. Incidences reported were as follows:
- Drug allergy 1.04%
- Drug interaction 6.35%
- Side effects 1.23%
- Incorrect dose for food 3.04%
- Improper alcohol consumption 1.59%
- Incorrect dose for age and/or weight 23.73%
Chemconsult®, HIP’s medication consulting program, prompts the pharmacist to run through a series of questions to make sure that it is safe to prescribe the drug to the patient. Pharmacist and Chemconsult® project manager Jenny Leung explains:
“As a pharmacist I am aware of the fact that prescriptions do occasionally have errors on them, but even I was surprised to see the error level for age/weight dosage - this is proof that the Chemconsult® system works and is in some cases saving lives.”
The July 2002 Safety+Quality Council Second National Report on Patient Safety concluded that around 140,000 hospital admissions a year in Australia were associated with medicine problems, costing taxpayers an estimated $380M.
19.11.08
