title: The impact of prescribing safety alerts for elderly persons in an electronic medical record: an interrupted time series evaluation.
abstract: BACKGROUND
  Considerable effort and attention have focused on medication safety in elderly persons; one approach that has been understudied in the outpatient environment is the use of computerized provider order entry with clinical decision support. The objective of this study was to examine the effects of computerized provider order entry with clinical decision support in reducing the use of potentially contraindicated agents in elderly persons.
  
  
  METHODS
  With data from a 39-month period of a natural experiment, we evaluated changes in medication dispensing using interrupted time series analysis to estimate changes, controlling for prealert prescribing trends. The setting was a large health maintenance organization in the Pacific Northwest. All adult enrollees of the health plan participated. The intervention was computerized alerts cautioning against using certain medications in elderly persons. The main outcome measure was dispensing per 10,000 members per month.
  
  
  RESULTS
  Following the implementation of the drug-specific alerts, a large and persistent reduction (5.1 prescriptions per 10,000, P=.004), a 22% relative decrease from the month before alert implementation, in the exposure of elderly patients to nonpreferred medications was observed. We found no evidence of a decrease in use of nonpreferred agents for nonelderly patients. The reduction seen in use of nonpreferred agents for elderly persons was driven primarily by decreases in dispensing for tertiary tricyclic agents.
  
  
  CONCLUSIONS
  We found that alerts in an outpatient electronic medical record aimed at decreasing prescribing of medication use in elderly persons may be an effective method of reducing prescribing of contraindicated medications. The effect of the alerts on patient outcomes is less certain and deserves further investigation.
authors.affiliation: Kaiser Permanente Center for Health Research, Portland, OR 97227, USA. David.H.Smith@kpchr.org
authors.forename: David H
authors.initials: DH
authors.lastname: Smith
authors.forename: Nancy
authors.initials: N
authors.lastname: Perrin
authors.forename: Adrianne
authors.initials: A
authors.lastname: Feldstein
authors.forename: Xiuhai
authors.initials: X
authors.lastname: Yang
authors.forename: Daniel
authors.initials: D
authors.lastname: Kuang
authors.forename: Steven R
authors.initials: SR
authors.lastname: Simon
authors.forename: Dean F
authors.initials: DF
authors.lastname: Sittig
authors.forename: Richard
authors.initials: R
authors.lastname: Platt
authors.forename: Stephen B
authors.initials: SB
authors.lastname: Soumerai
mesh_terms: D000328:Adult; D000368:Aged; D016303:Clinical Pharmacy Information Systems; D011307:Drug Prescriptions / Q000592:standards*; D017723:Drug Utilization Review / Q000458:organization & administration*; D005260:Female; D005500:Follow-Up Studies; D006801:Humans; D008297:Male; D009862:Online Systems; D010818:Practice Patterns, Physicians' / Q000592:standards* / Q000639:trends; D011787:Quality of Health Care; D014481:United States