Clinical Decision Support Systems: An Effective Pathway to Reduce Medical Errors and Improve Patient Safety

Abstract

1.1 Background Medical errors are both costly and harmful Medical errors cause tens of thousands of deaths in U.S. hospitals each year, more than from highway accidents, breast cancer, and AIDS combined A phone survey by the National Patient Safety Foundation found that 42 percent of over 100 million Americans believed that they had personally experienced a medical mistake The 1999 Institute of Medicine report stated that medical errors were the eighth leading cause of death in the U.S., killing between 44,000 and 98,000 people each year Another study indicated 225,000 deaths annually from medical errors, including 105,000 deaths due to "non-error adverse events of medications" Medical errors threaten the quality of health care, increased healthcare costs, and add to the medical malpractice crisis According to the Patient Safety in American Hospitals Study Survey by HealthGrades (HealthGrades, 2004; HealthGrades, 2007; HealthGrades, 2008; HealthGrades, 2009), the number of deaths in U.S. hospitals each year that are reportedly due to medical errors has been disturbingly high since 2000: 1. Based on a study of 37 million patient records, an average of 195,000 people in the U.S.

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