TUESDAY, Nov. 11, 2014 (HealthDay News) -- A computerized potentially inappropriate medications (PIMs) dashboard can allow identification of older inpatients on high-risk medication regimens, according to research published online Nov. 3 in the Journal of the American Geriatrics Society.
Josh F. Peterson, M.D., M.P.H., from Vanderbilt University in Nashville, Tenn., and colleagues developed an electronic tool to identify hospitalized adults, aged 65 years and older, who were administered one medication from a list of 240 PIMs. Individuals with at least one administered PIM were flagged using a computerized PIMS dashboard. The flagged records were reviewed by a clinical pharmacist who delivered an immediate point-of-care intervention for the treating physician in a pilot implementation.
The researchers found that 22 percent of the 797 individuals admitted over a three-week period were flagged by the PIMS dashboard, and 485 participant-medication pairs were identified for review by the clinical pharmacist. Additional manual review of the electronic medical record was necessary for 71 participant records with 139 participant-medication pairs. An intervention was warranted for 22 participants receiving 40 inappropriate medication orders, and the intervention was delivered by telephone or text message. Clinicians enacted 78 percent of the pharmacist recommendations.
"An electronic PIM dashboard provided an efficient mechanism for clinical pharmacists to rapidly screen the medication regimens of hospitalized elderly adults and deliver a timely point-of-care intervention when indicated," the authors write.
Abstract
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