Insurance, Information Technology, Economics of InterventionsImpact of a Patient-Centered Technology on Medication Errors During Pediatric Emergency Care
Section snippets
Overview
We completed a quasi-experimental intervention study to evaluate the effect of a patient-centered HIT on medication-related errors during pediatric ED care. During the study, control periods with usual care alternated with intervention periods wherein a parent-driven HIT application, ParentLink, elicited the child's medication and allergy history and provided tailored prescribing advice. The study was conducted between June 2005 and June 2006 at an urban tertiary care children's hospital ED
Results
Parent-child dyads were screened, and 1411 of 2002 were ultimately enrolled in the study; 1 patient was excluded from analysis due to a protocol violation, leaving 1410 subjects. Figure 2 details the screening and enrollment statistics by site. Follow-up telephone interviews were completed with 1111 of 1410 (79%) parents.
Table 1 details the characteristics of the parent-child dyads by control versus intervention period. Of 575 parents enrolled during intervention periods, 538 (94%) successfully
Discussion
We report on a novel patient-centered HIT product and its impact on the rate of medication errors in ED care for children. Experts have called for interventions targeting error-prone steps in the delivery of medications in high-risk settings.18 Overall, ParentLink demonstrated no significant impact on the rate of error.
In this study, medication errors related to communication and reconciliation appear to be low, limiting the potential benefit from ParentLink. A large number of errors were
Acknowledgment
This work was supported by grant R01 HS014947 (S.C.P.) from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality. Carts and batteries used during the study were donated by InfoLogix Systems.
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2014, Jornal de PediatriaCitation Excerpt :Difference was also noticed between the definitions of prescribing errors across the studies. While the majority of the studies used the broadest sense of the term “prescribing error”,20,24,26,29,32–34 as the one used for this meta-analysis, there were studies that used the term prescribing error solely as any incomplete or ambiguous order.11,28 Moreover, there was a differentiation in the instruments used for the data collection by each study, the studies’ design, the age groups that took part in each study, the settings, and the numerators and denominators used by each study for the assessment of the frequency of medication error occurrence.
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Portions of this manuscript were presented in abstract form at the Pediatric Academic Societies meeting in Toronto, Canada, May 5–8, 2007.