Researchers presented physicians with a modal alert, non-modal alert or no alert for 30 prescribing tasks in an e-prescribing system. Results showed that participants who had modal alerts were 11.6 times less likely to make a prescribing error than those not shown an alert. Physicians in the non-modal group were 3.2 times less likely to make a prescribing error compared to those without an alert.
The authors concluded that while both types of e-prescribing alerts reduced prescribing error rates, modal alerts were more effective.
Read the Journal of the American Medical Informatics Association abstract on e-prescribing alerts.
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