Default Drug Doses in Anesthesia Information Management Systems

Area of Science:

• Anesthesiology informatics
• Clinical informatics
• Health information technology

Background:

• Anesthesia Information Management Systems (AIMS) are prevalent in US academic practices.
• Hospitals are migrating from stand-alone AIMS to enterprise-wide electronic health records.
• This transition offers a chance to re-evaluate AIMS configurations, such as default drug doses.

Purpose of the Study:

• To assess the accuracy of pre-configured default drug doses in AIMS.
• To determine if default doses influence actual drug administration patterns.
• To provide recommendations for optimizing AIMS drug documentation.

Main Methods:

• Analyzed drug administration data from three institutions (two with default doses, one without).
• Identified the four most common doses for each drug (representing at least 5% of administrations).
• Compared actual usage data with existing default doses to determine necessary adjustments.

Main Results:

• Over 77% of drugs required at least one change to existing default doses across institutions.
• The most common doses used at the institution without defaults were consistently found among the common doses at institutions with defaults.
• This suggests default doses do not significantly alter provider administration behavior.

Conclusions:

• Default drug doses in AIMS require analysis and potential modification during system migration.
• Periodic review of default doses is recommended to align with current clinical practice.
• Default dose buttons appear to simplify documentation without altering actual drug selection.