Improving Safety By Computerizing Outpatient Prescribing

Improving Safety By Computerizing Outpatient Prescribing

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.

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.

Inclusion Criteria: 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

Exclusion Criteria:

• Clinics not using electronic medical records