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Clinical relevance of automated drug alerts from the perspective of medical providers.

Spina JR, Glassman PA, Belperio P, Cader R, Asch S. Clinical relevance of automated drug alerts from the perspective of medical providers. American journal of medical quality : the official journal of the American College of Medical Quality. 2005 Jan 1; 20(1):7-14.

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Abstract:

The authors used a real-time survey instrument and subsequent focus group among primary care clinicians at a large healthcare system to assess usefulness of automated drug alerts. Of 108 alerts encountered, 0.9% (n = 1) represented critical alerts, and 16% (n = 17) were significant drug interaction alerts. Sixty-one percent (n = 66) involved duplication of a medication or medication class. The rest (n = 24) involved topical medications, inhalers, or vaccines. Of the 84 potentially relevant alerts, providers classified 11% (9/84), or about 1 in 9, as useful. Drug interaction alerts were more often deemed useful than drug duplication alerts (44.4% versus 1.5%, P < .001). Focus group participants generally echoed these results when ranking the relevance of 15 selected alerts, although there was wide variance in ratings for individual alerts. Hence, a "smarter" system that utilizes a set of mandatory alerts while allowing providers to tailor use of other automated warnings may improve clinical relevance of drug alert systems.





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