Pharmacotherapy Alerting System Reduces Order-Verification Errors

Using a pharmacotherapy alerting system to identify errors in the verification of new medication orders, in conjunction with providing near-real-time feedback to users following each alert, can improve the accuracy of the order-verification process and facilitate interception and prevention of adverse drug events, according to a study published in the American Journal of Health-System Pharmacy.

The authors looked at a 900-bed hospital that uses a rules-based real-time pharmacotherapy alerting system (VigiLanz Corp., Minneapolis, MN, USA) to examine medication orders after the orders are verified by distributive pharmacists. If the system detects abnormal values that may indicate a verification error, an alert is issued to a pharmacy response...