Medication prescribing and monitoring errors in primary care: a report from the Practice Partner Research Network

Medication errors have been associated with poor patient outcomes and pose significant public health consequences. Establishing medication safety quality indicators is crucial to capturing the pervasiveness of preventable errors and is a fundamental first step in the process of improvement. In this article, a study is presented in which a set of medication prescribing and monitoring quality indicators were developed, and adherence to them was assessed among a group of US primary care practices.

Twenty Practice Partner Research Network practices in 14 US states with 94 clinicians and 52,246 active adult patients participated in the study. All practices use a common electronic medical record with dosing, interaction and monitoring decision support features. A consensus development process was used to select indicators in the categories of inappropriate treatment, dosing, drug-drug and drug-disease interactions, and monitoring of potential adverse events. Data extracted electronically from practices' electronic medical record were used to assess practice-level adherence with the indicator set as of 1 July 2008.

Thirty medication safety indicators were selected. Across all practices, inappropriate treatment, dosing, drug-drug and drug-disease interactions were avoided in 75%, 84%, 98% and 86% of eligible patients, respectively; monitoring of preventable adverse drug events occurred in 75% of patients. There was wide variability in practice adherence with the indicators.

The consensus development process was successful in selecting a broad set of primary care medication safety quality indicators. Although aggregate adherence was relatively high in this group of practices, opportunities exist to improve potential errors in treatment selection, dosing and monitoring.