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A National Web Conference on the Use of Health IT To Reduce Medication Errors and Improve Patient Safety

Event Date: August 26, 2014 | 2:30pm – 4:00pm ET

Overall Purpose:

The Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ) has identified a gap in health care and public health practitioners’ knowledge of health IT using multiple mechanisms, including the findings of the continuing education (CE) planning group. This series of Webinars is designed to increase practitioners’ ability to improve health care decisionmaking, support patient-centered care, and improve the quality and safety of care through the use of health IT. Properly implemented, health IT applications can improve adherence to evidence-based interventions related to patient safety and support reductions in medical errors. This session reviewed research to improve medication management strategies to reduce errors and improve outcomes through (1) implementation of the “Medication Metronome” project to support between-visit medication safety monitoring and dose adjustment for patients with chronic conditions, (2) evaluation of the potential severity of specific Look-Alike, Sound-Alike (LASA) drug name substitution errors in pediatric ambulatory practice to flag potential errors, and (3) implementation of a medication reconciliation program that seeks to understand how electronic facilitation of medication reconciliation alters the incidence of medication errors in ambulatory care.

Learning Objectives:

  1. Explain the effective use of health IT to support between-visit medication management for chronic disease to improve attainment of treatment goals. 
  2. Describe the benefits of an electronic approach to identifying potential prescription substitution errors at the point of selection by the clinician or pharmacist. 
  3. Discuss three findings related to improving the approach to electronic medication reconciliation used in the process of electronic prescribing. 

Event Materials:

  • Presentation Slides (PDF, 2 MB)
  • Q&A (PDF, 89.97 KB)

CME/CNE credits were approved for those who attended the live event of this Web conference only. If you have any questions about obtaining CME/CNE credit for this webinar, please send an email to DigitalHealthcareResearch@ahrq.hhs.gov.

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