At the time of introduction of the electronic medical records system,we introduced additional systems such as those for chemotherapy regimen registration and prescription inspection in order to carry out cancer chemotherapy treatments safely.
Later,on conducting an investigation of 139,615 prescriptions for injectable agents from September 2006 to August 2007,we found that our systems had reduced the numbers of inquiries such as those concerning omissions and overdosage.There were 407 inquiries concerning the 16,287 anticancer agent prescriptions among them and they uncovered prescribing errors such as selection of wrong regimens and making mistakes in cycle counts,that could have led to medical malpractice.We also found that inquiry rates were higher for breast cancer and colorectal cancer regimens.
Our findings indicated that mechanical prescription checking systems alone are not sufficient for ensuring safe treatment with anticancer agents and therefore the checking of prescriptions by pharmacists is considered to be very important.