Supporting Physicians to Improve Health Care

Published July 02, 2009 @ 10:38AM PT

In my post on the future of Health Care, Wendy Leonard felt that I was attacking physicians. I didn't mean to do that. Physicians are highly educated people with a commitment to the health of their patients. But they are human, and human beings are fallible. We've got a lot of data in the United States to prove that. We've seen that prescribing errors are common in hospitals. Between 44,000 and 98,000 Americans die each year in U.S. hospitals from preventable medical errors.

How do we reduce that problem? Computers. Software that tracks and analyses prescriptions can prevent drug interactions and erroneous prescribing. Websites that help with knowledge sharing. Any time we can support health care providers with useful technology, we can improve care. (Please note that I said useful technology. It has to be easy to use and understand.) Bar coding medications and providing hand-held devices are examples of that useful technology. Two VA hospitals in Kansas found these devices reduced medication error rates by 70 percent over a 5-year period. Nurse training has also been shown to reduce medical errors. So does reducing physicians' on-call time.

We can't let medical care hinge on just one person. Physicians alone cannot carry the health care system. They are part of a team that includes a wide variety of other health care providers and technological tools. The more you build out that team, the better you make medical care. Recognizing that fact is no insult to doctors.

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Author

Alanna Shaikh has spent the last ten years immersed in global health; she has worked for NGOs, companies, universities, and the US government on projects that ranged from preventing antibacterial resistance to improving maternal and child health.