Managed healthcare Research Paper Example | Topics and Well Written Essays - 750 words

Managed healthcare - Research Paper Example errors have been attributed to various factors including miscommunication, bad handwriting, and confusion in names, poor packaging, and other dosing unit errors. In most cases, the errors occur because of several complex factors throughout the health care system generated by both healthcare providers and patients. For example, we all have, at one time or another scratched our heads trying to figure out what a physician wrote on the prescription note. In this regards, the health information technological systems (HIT) have been introduced into the clinical setting to prevent and minimize medication errors occurrence but the menace â€Å"medication errors† still remains as a major problem and a danger to patient’s safety in the clinical care setting. One great milestone in the health care delivery and management system was the introduction of health information technology (HIT) to clinical care setting. An example of such solutions is the computerized physician order entry (CPOE) system, which has marked a great milestone in healthcare delivery. Despite such improvements, statistics still indicate a worrying trend in medication error incidents (Chaudhry et al., 2006). Looking at a report by CDC in 2010, it showed that more thanâ€Å"700,000 emergency department visits and 120,000 hospitalizations were due to adverse drug events (ADEs) annually†. In 2005, the report given by CDC on death and hospital mortality rates indicated medication errors as the sixth leading cause of patient mortality, eight years down the line in 2013, medication errors was identified as the third leading cause of patient mortality (CDC, 2005, 2013). This can be attributed to lack guidelines, measures and policies to enhance the utilization of the s ystems as well as lack of the relevant information of the associated benefits with HIT systems utilization. Medication errors is a current issue in healthcare delivery and management that needs to be addressed with great care and concern. The