Doctors override most e-Rx safety alerts

Research continues to show that the clinical decision support systems intended to protect patients from medication errors prove in some ways to be more of a hindrance than a help to doctors, says this article published by the American Medical Association. The latest example is a study of the electronic prescribing records of nearly 2,900 community physicians and other prescribers: Nearly 230,000 times these doctors were warned about potential drug interactions, and 90% of the time they decided to proceed as if the alert had never appeared.