Implementing Electronic Health Records

According to the Journal of Patient Safety more than 300,000 people yearly will enter the hospital never leaving due to preventable medical errors, making medical errors the third leading cause of death (James, 2013). Ineffective communication tools such as written medical records and written prescriptions could be the leading causes of these medical errors. The Institute of Medicine (IOM) estimates that medical errors alone cost the United States over $37 billion each year (2008). The implementation of Electronic health records (EHRs) could greatly reduce the number of medical errors seen in hospitals today as well as decrease the hospitals’ cost for such mistakes.

There is an international consensus that approximately 10% of hospitalized patients suffer from the damages brought about by medical interventions, around half of which are preventable (Flotta, Rizza, Bianco, Pileggi,&Pavia, 2012). ABC News reported that Tesome Sampson was admitted to the hospital. Her doctor ordered strict bed rest and progesterone suppositories to prevent premature later. Mistakenly she administered the drug, Prostin, which is commonly given to expel a fetus due to miscarriage from the womb. Sampson went into labor following the administration of the drug. After four hours of abdominal cramping she gave birth to her daughter in the hospital commode after nurses insisted she only “needed to have a bowel movement.” Sampson was just 5 ½ months pregnant. Unfortunately staff wasn’t able to catch this mistake even though a similar incident happened just a few hours earlier when the same drug was mistakenly given to another pregnant mother who later gave birth to unborn twins (Patel, 2009). Sadly, this type of medical error is too common and...

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...rieved May 26,

2014, from http://cms.hhs.gov/Medicare/E-Health/EHealthRecords/index.html

James, J. (2013, September). A new, evidence-based estimate of patient harms associated with hospital care. Journal of Patient Safety, 9, 122-128. Retrieved May 17, 2014 from http://journals.lww.com/journalpatientsafety/Fulltext/2013/09000/A_New,_Evidence_ based_Estimate_of_Patient_Harms.2.aspx

Patel, A. (2009). Tragic medication error results in accidental abortions and premature birth. ABC

News. Retrieved May 19, 2014, from http://abcnewsgo.com/Blotter/story?id=8383062

Valiee, S., Peyrovi ,H., Nasrabadi, A. (2014). Critical care nurses’ perception of nursing error and its causes: A qualitative study. Contemporary Nurse: A Journal For The Australian

Nursing Profession, 46(2), 206-213. doi:10.571/conu.2014.46.2.206