Pharmacy board investigates errors in prescriptions

The state board has urged doctors to use e-prescribing to avoid errors caused by handwriting.

COLUMBUS (AP) — The state pharmacy board is investigating errors in medical prescriptions filed electronically by doctors.

Incorrect drug names, doses and directions are appearing in Ohio pharmacists’ computer systems, either because of human error, software glitches or both.

“Somewhere in there, we’re being told that things are getting messed up,” said William Winsley, the board’s executive director.

Dominic Bartone, owner and pharmacist at Hocks Vandalia Pharmacy near Dayton, said he sees about two prescriptions a month that contain errors.

“It’s not a lot, but we’re in a profession that needs to be 100 percent accurate,” Bartone said. “One [error] is too many.”

The Ohio State Board of Pharmacy began urging doctors in 2000 to switch from handwriting prescriptions to e-prescribing so pharmacists wouldn’t have to decipher sloppy penmanship. Ohio authorizes the use of 37 electronic prescription software programs.

But the fear of error and the lack of uniform standards for software programs have made physicians slow to embrace electronic prescriptions, said Tim Maglione, spokesman for the Ohio State Medical Association.

Industry officials estimate that 74 million electronic prescriptions are filed in the United States each year. Ohio ranks ninth nationwide, according to SureScripts, a Virginia-based network provider of electronic prescribing services.

SureScripts Chief Marketing Officer Tammy Lewis said mistakes will decrease as more doctors use electronic filing. A bill in the U.S. Senate would require doctors who accept Medicare payments to write electronic prescriptions by 2011.

But some members of the Ohio pharmacy board remain unconvinced.

“The issue is that there are people on a national level that say e-prescribing is safer, better, faster, and we’re finding some evidence that it isn’t safer quite yet,” Winsley said.