Bravo to lawmakers for passing a vital healthcare provision

LOST IN the media fanfare over the Massachusetts Legislature's eleventh-hour lawmaking frenzy last week is a healthcare provision with far-reaching benefits for patient safety.

Part of the comprehensive healthcare bill, the provision will require all Massachusetts hospitals to adopt computerized physician order entry by 2012 as a condition of licensure. Each year, the computerized systems could prevent 55,000 serious medication errors and save $170 million in Massachusetts by alerting medical professionals to potential drug interactions and dosage errors that could result in extended hospitalizations.

These few lines of policy are the culmination of a four-year initiative, coordinated by the New England Healthcare Institute and the Massachusetts Technology Collaborative, that relied on a broad spectrum of healthcare researchers and decision-makers. The initiative sponsored groundbreaking research showing that 1 in 10 patients in Massachusetts community hospitals suffered a serious but preventable medication error.

The Massachusetts Legislature should be applauded for acting on this alarming data to protect the state's patients from life-threatening medication errors.

JOHN HALAMKA
Boston
The writer is chief information officer of CareGroup Health System of Boston.