High-risk prescribing and preventable drug-related complications are common in primary care. In a recent study printed in the New England Journal of Medicine, researchers evaluated whether the rates of high-risk prescribing by primary care clinicians and the related clinical outcomes would be reduced by a complex intervention.
Conducted in primary care practices, this cluster-randomized trial found that a combination of professional education, electronic health record alerts and financial incentives for practices to review potentially inappropriate prescribing decreased high-risk medication prescriptions.
Investigators also observed a decrease in two of the three medication-related complications associated with use of high-risk medications, suggesting a clinical benefit to this intervention. The success of this study argues for similar larger-scale, multi-modal patient safety studies to detect modest but significant improvements.
The conclusion was that a complex intervention combining professional education, informatics and financial incentives reduced the rate of high-risk prescribing of antiplatelet medications and NSAIDs may have improved clinical outcomes.
Source: N Engl J Med. 2016 Mar 17;374(11):1053-64. doi: 10.1056/NEJMsa1508955.
For additional resources on medication reconciliation and ADEs, visit the Great Plains QIN Medication Safety initiative webpage. You can also join our Learning and Action Network or contact the care coordination and medication safety task lead in your state to learn more about the assistance Great Plains QIN offers.