Survey finds strong support for technologies to improve patient safety - Industry Watch - 23% of Americans say they or a family member have received the wrong medication from a healthcare professional - Brief Article

Healthcare Financial Management, May, 2003

Twenty-three percent of Americans--nearly one in four--say they or a family member have received the wrong medication at some point from a healthcare professional, according to the latest AmerisourceBergen Index released recently. The survey was conducted in January 2003 by Opinion Research Corporation on behalf of AmerisourceBergen. The survey has a margin of error of plus or minus 3 percent. Reducing medication errors was a key topic of the survey. Seventy-five percent of respondents said they favored the use of barcode technologies as a way to reduce medication errors.

A related question addressed barcode scanning of medications. Twenty-four percent of all respondents selected barcode scanning as a means of increasing medication-dispensing accuracy. However, the top-rated survey topic was requiring physicians to use computers to issue prescriptions. This response was selected by 32 percent of all respondents.