Search

The article discusses the importance for U.S. pharmacies to perform a Health Insurance Portability and Accountability Act (HIPAA) self-assessment. The HIPAA calls on pharmacies and other health care professionals to safeguard a patient's protected health information (PHI) which contains information about a patients condition, care and treatment provided, and cost of treatment. Pharmacies are also encouraged to check whether any PHI in their possession is exposed.

The article discusses the data of pharmacy errors highlighting Pharmacists Mutual Cos.' Claims Study. It states that most of the errors come from patients receiving the wrong drug, mechanical error claims, and compounding errors. It adds that work has began to integrate the Claims Study data with other data in pharmacy to make information more useful to the development of risk management programs. A chart depicting the results of the 2010 Claims Study are also presented.