E-Prescribing Errors: What They Are and How to Avoid Them

When doctors send prescriptions electronically, it’s meant to cut down on mistakes—but e-prescribing errors, mistakes made when prescriptions are entered or sent through digital systems. Also known as electronic prescribing mistakes, they’re one of the leading causes of preventable harm in modern healthcare. These aren’t just typos. They’re wrong doses, missing allergy alerts, drug clashes that should’ve been flagged, or prescriptions sent to the wrong patient. A 2023 study found nearly 1 in 5 e-prescriptions had at least one avoidable error—some leading to hospitalizations.

These errors happen because systems are overloaded, rushed, or poorly designed. A doctor might copy-paste a previous prescription without checking if the patient’s kidney function changed. A pharmacist might miss a critical interaction because the alert popped up 12 times that day and they stopped paying attention. Or a patient’s weight isn’t entered correctly, so the system calculates a lethal dose of insulin. medication errors, harm caused by incorrect use of drugs. Also known as drug safety incidents, it’s the broader category these errors fall into. And electronic prescribing, the digital process of generating and transmitting prescriptions. Also known as e-prescribing, it’s supposed to fix these problems—but without proper checks, it just makes them faster and harder to catch. The biggest risks? Elderly patients on five or more drugs, kids getting adult doses, and people with allergies to common meds like penicillin or sulfa.

These aren’t rare edge cases. They show up in the posts below: a patient given SSRIs and NSAIDs together without a warning about stomach bleeding, a dose of dexamethasone prescribed without checking for diabetes, or a statin paired with vitamin A without monitoring liver function. These are all e-prescribing errors waiting to happen—because the system didn’t ask the right questions, or the user skipped the alert. The fix isn’t more technology. It’s better training, smarter alerts that don’t annoy clinicians, and double-checks built into the workflow. What you’ll find here are real cases where digital shortcuts turned dangerous—and how to prevent them before someone gets hurt.