Improving Safety By Computerizing Outpatient Prescribing
- Conditions
- Impact of Electronic Prescribing on Medication Safety
- Interventions
- Other: Adverse Drug Event Monitoring
- Registration Number
- NCT00235027
- Lead Sponsor
- Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ)
- Brief Summary
Patient safety is at the forefront of critical issues in health care. Medications are the single most frequent cause of adverse events, and in the inpatient setting adverse drug events (ADEs) are common, expensive, injurious to patients, and often preventable. Relatively little, however, is known about the frequency of ADEs in the ambulatory setting, how to monitor for outpatient ADEs, or on the impact of prevention strategies such as computerization of prescribing supplemented by decision-support.
- Detailed Description
Specific Aim 1: Increase routine identification of outpatient adverse drug events (ADEs) through development of a computerized ADE detection monitor.
Specific Aim 2: Use basic computerized outpatient prescribing to reduce preventable ADEs in a diverse array of outpatient settings.
Specific Aim 3: Use advanced decision-support within computerized prescribing to reduce the frequency of preventable ADEs, medication errors, and potential ADEs.
Recruitment & Eligibility
- Status
- COMPLETED
- Sex
- All
- Target Recruitment
- 701
At Brigham & Women's Hospital, clinics utilizing the electronic medical record will be included. At Regenstrief, any clinic that has access to their electronic medical record will be utilized.
- For the impact of basic decision support, clinics were not randomized
- For impact of advanced decision support, clinics were randomized to receive the intervention
- Clinics not using electronic medical records
Study & Design
- Study Type
- INTERVENTIONAL
- Study Design
- PARALLEL
- Arm && Interventions
Group Intervention Description Adverse Drug Event Monitoring Adverse Drug Event Monitoring In this intervention arm, clinicians received medication safety alerts when they prescribed medications in the electronic medical record.
- Primary Outcome Measures
Name Time Method Preventable Adverse drug events 8/5/2004 - 1/5/2005 Data were electronically collected each time a physician entered a prescription that triggered an alert related to medication safety.
- Secondary Outcome Measures
Name Time Method Total adverse drug events, medication errors 1/15/2001 - 5/15/2001
Trial Locations
- Locations (2)
Brigham and Women's Hospital
🇺🇸Boston, Massachusetts, United States
Regenstrief/Indiana University
🇺🇸Indianapolis, Indiana, United States