Errors related to outpatient e-prescribing

Electronic prescribing, commonly referred to as e-prescribing, has been introduced to many outpatient settings to reduce medication errors and facilitate prescription processing. E-prescribing allows prescribers to electronically generate and send e-prescriptions to pharmacies. Federal government requirement for meaningful use of electronic health records has led to significant increase in the number of outpatient settings using e-prescribing in the USA. Although e-prescribing is known to reduce medication errors related to poor handwriting and illegibility issues, it also creates new types of errors. In this chapter, we discuss common e-prescribing errors that occur in outpatient practices and potential solutions to ensure patient safety.