Hospital staff members studied 37 cases over a three-month period in 2008-2009. An analysis of those cases revealed a 92 percent rate of medication errors.
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To combat the problem, the hospital assigned pharmacists to check patients’ discharge orders before they were released from the hospital. If an error is discovered on their discharge order, the assigned pharmacist proceeded to contact the physician. The intervention helped the hospital’s medication error rate fall drastically from 92 percent to nearly zero, according to the report. In turn, the hospital’s readmission rate halved to a little more than 5 percent.
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