But there are some glitches in the system, some of which are caused by, well, sloppiness. Take doctors' handwriting, for example. In the March-April 1997 issue of the journal Heart Lung , the Presbyterian Hospital of Dallas reports on the legibility of medication orders. The article states that 20 percent of U.S. orders are illegible, or legible only with great effort. Compare that with a report from the June 1999 issue of the Singapore Medical Journal , which found an illegibility rate in Singapore of only 4.5 percent.
Illegible orders can lead to serious mistakes, and that's nothing short of dangerous.