The growing rate of medication errors poses a serious threat to the hospital in question and requires a close examination of its roots to determine the steps required for its reduction. One of the universal solutions to the issue is the adoption of a digital framework that will help medical personnel control prescriptions. A drug distribution system that provides computer assistance for nurses, physicians, and pharmacists alike is a crucial source of improvement of prescription accuracy (Ellsworth et al., 2016). Digital medical systems are proven to have the highest rate of error-proof operations, and they have a positive impact on the time taken to analyze data (Lan et al., 2015). Electronic medical records provide a unique opportunity for the hospital to increase patient safety, decrease drug-related errors, and avoid unnecessary expenditures on compensations for patients who suffered from them.
Two out of three patients who suffered from the actions of the hospital’s personnel deserve to have their excess medication costs and time spent in the hospital covered by the organization. One person sustained damage and pain due to the error and deserves additional compensation. To determine the responsibility of the hospital staff for each of the three cases, the hospital must evaluate their actions in accordance with the hospital’s standards of care and consequences of their errors. Since the described errors were avoidable, they may result in a negligence action to cover the costs of benefits provided to the patients who suffered from these mistakes. Since all cases are relatively minor, the employees responsible for the prescription errors will be required to cover the bed and medication costs, as well as the damage for inflicted pain in a case that resulted in a decrease in health.
References
Ellsworth, M. A., Aakre, C. A., Dziadzko, M., Peters, S. G., Pickering, B. W., & Herasevich, V. (2016). Early Computerization of patient care at Mayo clinic. Mayo Clinic Proceedings, 91(7), e93–e101.
Lan, H., Thongprayoon, C., Ahmed, A., Herasevich, V., Sampathkumar, P., Gajic, O., & O’Horo, J. C. (2015). Automating quality metrics in the era of electronic medical records: Digital signatures for ventilator bundle compliance. BioMed Research International, 2015, 1-6.