Institute Of Medicine Calls For All U.S. Doctors And Pharmacies To Use E-Prescriptions By 2010Institute Of Medicine Calls For All U.S. Doctors And Pharmacies To Use E-Prescriptions By 2010

All U.S. physicians and pharmacies should be using electronic-prescription systems by 2010 to reduce the estimated 1.5 million preventable medication errors that happen each year in the United States, recommends the Institute of Medicine in a report released on Thursday.

The Preventing Medication Errors report called medication errors "surprisingly common and costly to the nation." The average preventable adverse drug event during a hospital admission added about $8,750 in costs. The cost of 400,000 mistakes--which is the low-end of the estimated errors that take place each year--would be $3.5 billion, it says.

The use of e-prescribing systems helps reduce medical errors by red-flagging potential adverse reactions, allergies, and illegible handwriting; and they also eliminate mistakes made during hand-off of processes.

The new report follows up an often quoted 1999 report called To Err Is Human, which was the first time the Institute recommended the use of IT to reduce medical mistakes like drug errors.