Medication Safety in Primary Care Practice: results from a PPRNet quality improvement intervention.

Wessell AM, Ornstein SM, Jenkins RG, Nemeth LS, Litvin CB, Nietert PJ.

Source

Department of Family Medicine, Medical University of South Carolina, Charleston, SC 29425, USA. Wessell@musc.edu

Abstract

Reducing medication errors is a fundamental patient safety goal; however, few improvement interventions have been evaluated in primary care settings. The Medication Safety in Primary Care Practice project was designed to test the impact of a multimethod quality improvement intervention on 5 categories of preventable prescribing and monitoring errors in 20 Practice Partner Research Network (PPRNet) practices. PPRNet is a primary care practice-based research network among users of a common electronic health record (EHR). The intervention was associated with significant improvements in avoidance of potentially inappropriate therapy, potential drug-disease interactions, and monitoring of potential adverse events over 2 years. Avoidance of potentially inappropriate dosages and drug-drug interactions did not change over time. Practices implemented a variety of medication safety strategies that may be relevant to other primary care audiences, including use of EHR-based audit and feedback reports, medication reconciliation, decision-support tools, and refill protocols.