Nivethietha Maniam

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

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.

Patient-centered interventions to improve medication management and adherence: A qualitative review of research findings

OBJECTIVE Patient-centered approaches to improving medication adherence hold promise, but evidence of their effectiveness is unclear. This review reports the current state of scientific research around interventions to improve medication management through four patient-centered domains: shared decision-making, methods to enhance effective prescribing, systems for eliciting and acting on patient feedback about medication use and treatment goals, and medication-taking behavior. METHODS We reviewed literature on interventions that fell into these domains and were published between January 2007 and May 2013. Two reviewers abstracted information and categorized studies by intervention type. RESULTS We identified 60 studies, of which 40% focused on patient education. Other intervention types included augmented pharmacy services, decision aids, shared decision-making, and clinical review of patient adherence. Medication adherence was an outcome in most (70%) of the studies, although 50% also examined patient-centered outcomes. CONCLUSIONS We identified a large number of medication management interventions that incorporated patient-centered care and improved patient outcomes. We were unable to determine whether these interventions are more effective than traditional medication adherence interventions. PRACTICE IMPLICATIONS Additional research is needed to identify effective and feasible approaches to incorporate patient-centeredness into the medication management processes of the current health care system, if appropriate.

A cross-sectional observational study of high override rates of drug allergy alerts in inpatient and outpatient settings, and opportunities for improvement

Objectives To evaluate how often and why providers overrode drug allergy alerts in both the inpatient and outpatient settings. Design A cross-sectional observational study of drug allergy alerts generated over a 3-year period between 1 January 2009 and 31 December 2011. Setting A 793-bed tertiary care teaching affiliate of Harvard Medical School and 36 primary care practices. Participants Drug allergy alerts were displayed for a total of 29 420 patients across both settings. Main outcome measures Proportion of drug allergy alerts displayed and overridden, proportion of appropriate overrides, proportion of overrides in each medication class, different reasons for overriding and types of reactions overridden. Results A total of 158 023 drug allergy alerts were displayed, 131 615 (83%) in the inpatient setting and 26 408 (17%) in the outpatient setting; 128 157 (81%) of which were overridden. A random sample of inpatient (n=200, 0.19%) and outpatient (n=50, 0.25%) alert overrides were screened for appropriateness, with >96% considered appropriate. Alerts for some drug classes, such as ‘non-antibiotic sulfonamides’, were overridden for >81% of prescriptions in both settings. The most common override reason was patient has taken previously without allergic reaction. In the inpatient setting alone, 70.9% of alerts that warned against the risk of anaphylaxis were overridden. Conclusions The information contained in patients’ drug allergy lists needs to be regularly updated. Most of the drug allergy alerts were overridden, with the majority of alert overrides in the subsample considered appropriate. Some of the rules for these alerts should be carefully reviewed and modified, or removed. Further research is needed to understand providers’ overriding of alerts that warned against the risk of ‘anaphylaxis’, which are more concerning with respect to patient safety.