Using a bar code on patient wristbands cut drug errors by more than half, researchers at one U.S. hospital reported on Wednesday.

Researchers at Brigham and Women’s Hospital in Boston found a bar-code system that matched patients with their medicines reduced the chance of getting the wrong drug by 57 percent.

“Having this technology is a good thing,” Dr. Eric Poon of Brigham and Women’s said in a telephone interview. “Patients receive a lot of medications when hospitalized. It’s good to have the additional safety net.”

The chances of getting the wrong dose fell 42 percent and of getting a drug when no doctor ordered it fell 61 percent, Poon’s team reported in the New England Journal of Medicine.

Under the system, bar codes on the patient’s wristband and on the drug container let nurses cross-check the person’s identity against the medicine about to be given. It is usually part of a larger electronic medication administration system that also uses bar codes.

“Given the high number of doses administered and orders transcribed in any acute care hospital, implementation of the bar-code eMAR could substantially improve medication safety,” Poon’s team wrote.

The system also cut the chances a patient would get medicine at the wrong time by 27 percent.

Transcription errors, which occurred at the rate of 6 percent on medical units that used the older system of dispensing drugs, fell to zero.

Poon said the study, the first large-scale test of a bar-code system throughout a hospital, was done six weeks after the new system was phased in and the error rate may be even lower now because the hospital has made improvements.

Such systems are not cheap. He said the 735-bed facility invested roughly $10 million to implement it but that most of the cost went toward training.

Previous studies have shown nearly 7 percent of patients are victims of medication errors, although most are not dangerous. About one third happen when the drug is ordered and another third when it is given to the patient.

There has been concern that hospital workers might try to bypass the system or become too reliant on it, increasing the chance of other types of errors. Poon said workers quickly embrace it once they see it catching mistakes.

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By Gene Emery

BOSTON (Reuters)