WSJ Op-Ed Calls for Including Pharmacists on Patient Care Teams

A recent Wall Street Journal op-ed assessing ways to reduce medical errors in the U.S. strongly recommends including pharmacists on care teams. “How to Make Hospitals Less Deadly” by James B. Lieber notes that pharmacists’ extensive knowledge of medications offers an important barrier to common medical errors.

“Doctors have only glancing knowledge of how an ever-multiplying number of drugs interact with diet, age, disease, body type and each other,” he writes, pointing to a study that showed placing pharmacists in patient areas decreased errors by 45% and cut errors leading to death or severe harm by 94%.

“Studies have long demonstrated that pharmacists have much to offer in terms of ensuring appropriate prescribing and optimal medication therapy outcomes,” said ASHP CEO Paul W. Abramowitz, Pharm.D., Sc.D. (Hon.), FASHP. “This article is yet another call to include pharmacists on patient care teams in all settings.”

Other hospital reforms that could reduce medical errors include structured patient handoffs during care transitions, improvements in diagnostics, and interoperable electronic medical records, according to Lieber, author of the book Killer Care: How Medical Error Became America’s Third Largest Cause of Death and What Can Be Done About It.