Data Collecting Strategies for the Improvement of Healthcare Service: Analyzing Dispensing Errors in a Hospital Pharmacy

Abstract

In this report, we first describe the importance of both a quality management system and a risk factor monitoring system for healthcare service. This report also discusses a case study that monitored dispensing errors in a hospital pharmacy. The authors used audit records and then interlinked error data with both location and prescription data to investigate the circumstances and potential causes of these errors. The results suggest that the frequency of prescription of certain drugs is a key factor in these types of errors. Understanding the effects of this high volume of prescriptions in the hospital pharmacy could help prevent errors and increase productivity. This report showed that an effective monitoring system could create concrete improvements and enhance utilization of information.