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      Are We Heeding the Warning Signs? Examining Providers’ Overrides of Computerized Drug-Drug Interaction Alerts in Primary Care

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          Abstract

          Background

          Health IT can play a major role in improving patient safety. Computerized physician order entry with decision support can alert providers to potential prescribing errors. However, too many alerts can result in providers ignoring and overriding clinically important ones.

          Objective

          To evaluate the appropriateness of providers’ drug-drug interaction (DDI) alert overrides, the reasons why they chose to override these alerts, and what actions they took as a consequence of the alert.

          Design

          A cross-sectional, observational study of DDI alerts generated over a three-year period between January 1st, 2009, and December 31st, 2011.

          Setting

          Primary care practices affiliated with two Harvard teaching hospitals. The DDI alerts were screened to minimize the number of clinically unimportant warnings.

          Participants

          A total of 24,849 DDI alerts were generated in the study period, with 40% accepted. The top 62 providers with the highest override rate were identified and eight overrides randomly selected for each (a total of 496 alert overrides for 438 patients, 3.3% of the sample).

          Results

          Overall, 68.2% (338/496) of the DDI alert overrides were considered appropriate. Among inappropriate overrides, the therapeutic combinations put patients at increased risk of several specific conditions including: serotonin syndrome (21.5%, n=34), cardiotoxicity (16.5%, n=26), or sharp falls in blood pressure or significant hypotension (28.5%, n=45). A small number of drugs and DDIs accounted for a disproportionate share of alert overrides. Of the 121 appropriate alert overrides where the provider indicated they would “monitor as recommended”, a detailed chart review revealed that only 35.5% (n=43) actually did. Providers sometimes reported that patients had already taken interacting medications together (15.7%, n=78), despite no evidence to confirm this.

          Conclusions and Relevance

          We found that providers continue to override important and useful alerts that are likely to cause serious patient injuries, even when relatively few false positive alerts are displayed.

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          Most cited references12

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          Effects of computerized physician order entry and clinical decision support systems on medication safety: a systematic review.

          Iatrogenic injuries related to medications are common, costly, and clinically significant. Computerized physician order entry (CPOE) and clinical decision support systems (CDSSs) may reduce medication error rates. We identified trials that evaluated the effects of CPOE and CDSSs on medication safety by electronically searching MEDLINE and the Cochrane Library and by manually searching the bibliographies of retrieved articles. Studies were included for systematic review if the design was a randomized controlled trial, a nonrandomized controlled trial, or an observational study with controls and if the measured outcomes were clinical (eg, adverse drug events) or surrogate (eg, medication errors) markers. Two reviewers extracted all the data. Discussion resolved any disagreements. Five trials assessing CPOE and 7 assessing isolated CDSSs met the criteria. Of the CPOE studies, 2 demonstrated a marked decrease in the serious medication error rate, 1 an improvement in corollary orders, 1 an improvement in 5 prescribing behaviors, and 1 an improvement in nephrotoxic drug dose and frequency. Of the 7 studies evaluating isolated CDSSs, 3 demonstrated statistically significant improvements in antibiotic-associated medication errors or adverse drug events and 1 an improvement in theophylline-associated medication errors. The remaining 3 studies had nonsignificant results. Use of CPOE and isolated CDSSs can substantially reduce medication error rates, but most studies have not been powered to detect differences in adverse drug events and have evaluated a small number of "homegrown" systems. Research is needed to evaluate commercial systems, to compare the various applications, to identify key components of applications, and to identify factors related to successful implementation of these systems.
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            Adverse drug events in ambulatory care.

            Adverse events related to drugs occur frequently among inpatients, and many of these events are preventable. However, few data are available on adverse drug events among outpatients. We conducted a study to determine the rates, types, severity, and preventability of such events among outpatients and to identify preventive strategies. We performed a prospective cohort study, including a survey of patients and a chart review, at four adult primary care practices in Boston (two hospital-based and two community-based), involving a total of 1202 outpatients who received at least one prescription during a four-week period. Prescriptions were computerized at two of the practices and handwritten at the other two. Of the 661 patients who responded to the survey (response rate, 55 percent), 162 had adverse drug events (25 percent; 95 percent confidence interval, 20 to 29 percent), with a total of 181 events (27 per 100 patients). Twenty-four of the events (13 percent) were serious, 51 (28 percent) were ameliorable, and 20 (11 percent) were preventable. Of the 51 ameliorable events, 32 (63 percent) were attributed to the physician's failure to respond to medication-related symptoms and 19 (37 percent) to the patient's failure to inform the physician of the symptoms. The medication classes most frequently involved in adverse drug events were selective serotonin-reuptake inhibitors (10 percent), beta-blockers (9 percent), angiotensin-converting-enzyme inhibitors (8 percent), and nonsteroidal antiinflammatory agents (8 percent). On multivariate analysis, only the number of medications taken was significantly associated with adverse events. Adverse events related to drugs are common in primary care, and many are preventable or ameliorable. Monitoring for and acting on symptoms are important. Improving communication between outpatients and providers may help prevent adverse events related to drugs. Copyright 2003 Massachusetts Medical Society
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              Physicians' decisions to override computerized drug alerts in primary care.

              Although computerized physician order entry reduces medication errors among inpatients, little is known about the use of this system in primary care. We calculated the override rate among 3481 consecutive alerts generated at 5 adult primary care practices that use a common computerized physician order entry system for prescription writing. For detailed review, we selected a random sample of 67 alerts in which physicians did not prescribe an alerted medication and 122 alerts that resulted in a written prescription. We identified factors associated with the physicians' decisions to override a medication alert, and determined whether an adverse drug event (ADE) occurred. Physicians overrode 91.2% of drug allergy and 89.4% of high-severity drug interaction alerts. In the multivariable analysis using the medical chart review sample (n = 189), physicians were less likely to prescribe an alerted medication if the prescriber was a house officer (odds ratio [OR], 0.26; 95% confidence interval [CI], 0.08-0.84) and if the patient had many drug allergies (OR, 0.70; 95% CI, 0.53-0.93). They were more likely to override alerts for renewals compared with new prescriptions (OR, 17.74; 95% CI, 5.60-56.18). We found no ADEs in cases where physicians observed the alert and 3 ADEs among patients with alert overrides, a nonsignificant difference (P =.55). Physician reviewers judged that 36.5% of the alerts were inappropriate. Few physicians changed their prescription in response to a drug allergy or interaction alert, and there were few ADEs, suggesting that the threshold for alerting was set too low. Computerized physician order entry systems should suppress alerts for renewals of medication combinations that patients currently tolerate.
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                Author and article information

                Contributors
                Role: Editor
                Journal
                PLoS One
                PLoS ONE
                plos
                plosone
                PLoS ONE
                Public Library of Science (San Francisco, USA )
                1932-6203
                2013
                26 December 2013
                : 8
                : 12
                : e85071
                Affiliations
                [1 ] The Center for Patient Safety Research and Practice, Division of General Internal Medicine, Brigham and Women’s Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America
                [2 ]School of Medicine, Pharmacy and Health, The University of Durham, Stockton on Tees, Durham, United Kingdom
                [3 ]Harvard Medical School, Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America
                [4 ]Partners Healthcare Systems, Inc., Wellesley, Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America
                [5 ]Department of Anesthesia, Critical Care and Pain Medicine, Massachusetts General Hospital, Boston, Massachusetts, United States of America
                [6 ]Nursing Department, Inha University, Incheon, South Korea
                Charité University Medicine Berlin, Germany
                Author notes

                Competing Interests: The authors declare their affiliation to Partners Healthcare Systems, Inc. This does not alter the authors' adherence to all the PLOS ONE policies on sharing data and materials.

                Conceived and designed the experiments: SPS DWB. Performed the experiments: SPS DLS KCN IC. Analyzed the data: SPS DLS KCN IC NM PCD DWB. Contributed reagents/materials/analysis tools: DLS. Wrote the manuscript: SPS. Analysis and interpretation of data: SPS DLS KCN IC NM PCD DWB
. Drafting the article or revising it critically for important intellectual content: SPS DLS KCN IC NM PCD DWB

. Final approval of the version to be published: SPS DLS KCN IC NM PCD DWB.

                Article
                PONE-D-13-22969
                10.1371/journal.pone.0085071
                3873469
                24386447
                5f689647-1781-419a-92f4-c2612df16d33
                Copyright @ 2013

                This is an open-access article distributed under the terms of the Creative Commons Attribution License, which permits unrestricted use, distribution, and reproduction in any medium, provided the original author and source are credited.

                History
                : 3 June 2013
                : 22 November 2013
                Funding
                This study was funded by a grant from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ). The funders had no role in study design, data collection and analysis, decision to publish, or preparation of the manuscript.
                Categories
                Research Article

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