Question: Why aren't prescriptions typed instead of handwritten to cut down on errors?
From: Tonya H. of Jacksonville, NC

Answer: Unfortunately, prescription errors account for 1.5 million Americans being sickened, injured, or killed annually according to an article in the Washington Post in 7/06. The errors are in prescribing, dispensing, and taking the medications according to a report by the Institute of Medicine. The additional cost in treating drug-related injuries in hospitals was conservatively estimated at $3.5 billion per year. Although your question is specific to written physician prescriptions, the errors do not rest solely on their shoulders. If you do research on ways to prevent prescription errors, you will find that many experts recommend that the focus be taken off the individual as the problem but rather be placed on the system in place to safeguard against these errors. Individuals are human and humans make errors so the system should expect that errors do occur and so the system must have checks and rechecks along the way. Experts also recommend that there be a system for reporting the errors so that providers, pharmaceutical companies, pharmacists can learn and improve their methods. The experts provide recommendations to all providers, many of them quite simple sounding. For example, physicians need to write clearly and legibly, be specific in their instructions and side effects, use brochures, and consider the use of electronic prescriptions which can check for incorrect doses and dangerous drug interactions. Pharmacists need to check and recheck the prescription and label and keep similar looking and sounding drugs in different areas. When possible, consumers are also urged to read the prescription out loud to the physician and to check the label of the filled prescription with the written prescription. The patient should report all allergies and other medications being taken. The experts also look to the FDA and pharmaceutical companies to evaluate labels, packages, design of products, too many similar sounding medication names. New technology and electronic prescribing are expected to reduce the number of medication errors as well. Also suggested are standardized bar-code systems and “blister packs” that make it easier to identify meds and let consumers know whether they took the day’s dose.