Enhancing medication safety with System Approach to Verifying Electronic Prescriptions (SAV E-Rx): pharmacists' review of product selection outcomes between prescribed and dispensed medications

https://pubmed.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/40983365/ Automated Tool Shows Potential for Enhancing Medication Safety A new AHRQ-funded study published in BMJ Health & Care Informatics evaluated an automated tool that shows potential for detecting discrepancies between prescribed and dispensed medications. Using the tool, the System Approach to Verifying Electronic Prescriptions (SAV E-Rx), researchers analyzed over 1.2 million e-prescription records from 14 pharmacies across 9 states. Of the 662 cases reviewed by pharmacists, 89 percent were intended substitutions (such as dosage or form changes), while 11 percent represented unintended mismatches, primarily due to human factors and labeling issues. Though dispensing errors were rare, unintended mismatches could pose clinical risks. Most pharmacists favored receiving future alerts for these errors. The findings suggest that integrating automated verification tools like SAV E-Rx can strengthen patient safety by catching medication discrepancies that may otherwise go unnoticed, highlighting opportunities for improved labeling standards, workflow optimization, and pharmacy staff training to prevent dispensing errors