Electronic medical records aid reporting of drug problems, study finds

The Wall Street Journal reports that a recent small study finds that reporting of prescription side effects increases when doctors use computerized patient records. "The study, at Massachusetts General and Brigham & Women's hospitals in Boston and sponsored by Pfizer Inc., showed a large increase in reporting of adverse events to the Food and Drug Administration once doctors used an automated tool. Over five months in 2008 and 2009, 26 doctors at the two hospitals reported 217 side effects to regulators, compared with zero reports in the same group in the previous year, according to the study, published online Monday in the medical journal Pharmacoepidemiology and Drug Safety" (Rockoff, 10/15).

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This article was reprinted from khn.org with permission from the Henry J. Kaiser Family Foundation. Kaiser Health News, an editorially independent news service, is a program of the Kaiser Family Foundation, a nonpartisan health care policy research organization unaffiliated with Kaiser Permanente.