Effect of computerized physician order entry in the prescribing errors in inpatient care in a pulmonology unit

Introduction: The objective of this work was to perform a comparative analysis of the different medical errors achieved when using manual orders entry and computerized physician order entry. Method: Longitudinal study of drug prescriptions recorded in the pharmaceutical service over the deployment period of a computerized physician order entry (CPOE) in the pulmonology unit. The prescription errors in inpatient care treatments were analyzed over three different periods of time of one week: the week prior to the deployment of the CPOE (manual physician order entry: control group) and before the end of the 1 st and 2 nd months from the deployment of the aforementioned system (EP1 and EP2 respectively: experimental group). Results: 3,257 drugs prescribed in 309 treatment orders (mean 10.5 drugs per patient) were analyzed detecting 422 prescription errors. 352 (34.9 %) were identified in the first stage of the study, corresponding to the manual physician order entry (MPOE), 45 (4.1%), one month after the deployment of the CPOE (EP1) and 25 (2.2%) after two months from the deployment (EP2). The decrease was significant when the results of the MPOE were compared against the results obtained in both CPOEs. Also, a decrease of prescription errors was found when comparing both CPOE stages. These results imply a decrease of the RR of 88.2% (comparing EP1 vs MPOE), 93.7 (EP2 vs MPOE) and 46% (EP2 vs EP1). Conclusion: Errors in drug prescription to patient in the pulmonology unit are significantly reduced when a computerized physician order entry is applied. This drop is mainly related to the doses and measurement units of the prescriptions.