Identifying and Quantifying Medication Errors: Evaluation of Rapidly Discontinued Medication Orders Submitted to a Computerized Physician Order Entry System

This is the authors' abstract. We don't add key points for this paper.

All methods of identifying medication prescribing errors are fraught with inaccuracies and systematic bias. A systematic, efficient, and inexpensive way of measuring and quantifying prescribing errors would be a useful step for reducing them. We ask if rapid discontinuations of prescription-orders--where physicians stop their orders within 2 hours--would be an expedient proxy for prescribing errors? To study this we analyzed CPOE-system medication orders entered and then discontinued within 2 hours. We investigated these phenomena in real time via interviews with corresponding ordering physicians. Each order was also independently reviewed by a clinical pharmacist or physicians. We found that of 114 rapidly discontinued orders by 75 physicians, two-thirds (35 of 53, PPV = 66; 95% CI = 53-77) of medication orders discontinued within 45 minutes were deemed inappropriate (overdose, underdose, etc.). Overall, 55% (63 of 114; 95% CI = 46-64%) of medication orders discontinued within 2 hours were deemed inappropriate. This measure offers a rapid, constant, inexpensive, and objective method to identify medication orders with a high probability of error. It may also serve as a screening and teaching mechanism for physicians-in-training.