When I was about 8-years old I picked up some sort of eye infection at school. My pediatrician prescribed a medication and my mom went to our local pharmacist to pick it up. When she pried my eye open and put the drops in, it was as if the dropper contained gasoline. My eye became bright red and felt like it was on fire.
So my mom phoned the pharmacist and told him, only to find out he read the prescription wrong and gave me ear drops instead of eye drops. Though the ear drops didnt do any damage, this memory still sticks with me today. Surprisingly, this is not an uncommon event. While statistics vary, its estimated that thousands of prescription errors are made each year, resulting in it being one of the leading causes of malpractice law suits. In some cases pharmacists read handwriting incorrectly, and in others patients forget the doctors instructions or dont understand them. While some of these errors are little more than minor annoyances, others are fatal.
Recognizing this problem, in 1998 Dr. Douglas Smith, an experienced emergency room physician, decided to do something about it. Along with friend Larry Labossier, Smith approached Victor Cook, founder of a technology company, and said there had to be a way to write prescriptions on the computer that was quick and easy and would cut down on errors. Cook agreed, put his computer team to work and in 1999 the three formed ScriptRx.
Based in West Palm Beach, ScriptRx offers electronic script writing and patient instructions to hospitals, large practices and care centers around the country.
“We had guys doing applications for cash registers so we took those same skills and applied them,” Cook says. So instead of hitting the hamburger button and the iced tea button, authorized doctors go to the terminal and hit buttons that say “take with food” or “change dressing daily.”
All a doctor needs to do is follow the prompts and patient instructions are laser printed in an easy to read format. Scripts are also easily printed on the required paper so that the patient can take them right to a pharmacy. The system requires only a few minutes of in-service and Cook says it pays for itself in the time it saves doctors.
“No more nurses questioning what they wrote and no more calls from pharmacist and patients and no more errors. This product lets doctors focus on the patient in front of them,” he says, adding that even if an error is caught it still wastes valuable time.
And since ScriptRx was spearheaded by an ER doctor who solicited input from many colleagues, it was designed with the doctors convenience in mind. There are no log-ins or passwords needed to access the system. Instead ScriptRx uses biometric scanning of the thumb, or any of the other nine digits.
The security measure also adds extra security to the script writing process. Cook says only one person tried to write a false script and he was easy to catch because they had his thumb print.
ScriptRx was first installed in the ER of Good Samaritan Hospital in West Palm Beach in 2000. Cook says feedback was immediate and positive. Now the system is used in more than 400 facilities in 32 states. About 90 percent are in large ERs and the rest are split among smaller care centers.
Cook, who is now the companys president and CEO, says the ScriptRx units are most cost effective in large facilities that see high volumes of patients. Typically one unit is installed per each 15,000 patients visits each year. The largest facility ScriptRx serves has six units in the ER.
A facility that adopts the ScriptRx system pays an installation fee for a new computer unit that is under warranty and an annual maintenance fee. It also receives the software, upgrades and paper. When the paper is running low, one phone call to ScriptRx will get it replenished.
All ScriptRx units are networked so the company can monitor the systems and immediately find when one is down or having problems. It is also designed to integrate into a larger system used by a facility.
While this technology can potentially avoid thousands of medical errors each year, Cook remains modest about it, saying its all in a days work. “I think the trend nationally is for automation in health care. And were just a small part of it.”
