Medication Without Harm - How Digital Healthcare Tools Can Support Providers and Improve Patient Safety

Event Date: July 24, 2024 | 2:30pm – 4:00pm ET

Event Materials:

  • Presentation Slides (PDF, 8.39 MB).
  • Q&As (PDF, 135 KB).

Description:

Medication errors are a leading cause of injury and avoidable harm in healthcare, with an estimated 1.3 million people impacted in the U.S. each year. Preventable medication errors cost the nation more than $21 billion annually across all care settings, representing a serious public health concern, as well as an economic burden on our healthcare system. AHRQ’s expert panel of speakers presented on how quality improvement approaches and digital healthcare interventions such as clinical decision support tools are reducing medication errors, improving provider effectiveness, and enhancing patient safety in a variety of clinical care settings. 

Learning Objectives:

  • Discuss how an e-prescribing tool can reduce medication discrepancies and improve patient safety by enhancing communication between pharmacists and providers.
  • Identify how clinical decision support systems can significantly reduce the prescribing of potentially inappropriate medications to older patients at the time of discharge from the emergency department setting.
  • Explain how outcome measures, such as the Wrong-Patient Retract-and-Reorder measure, can be developed and used to detect medication errors in electronic orders.

Speakers:

Samantha Pitts
Assistant Professor, Department of Medicine
Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine
Camille Vaughan

Camille P. Vaughan, M.D., M.S.(on behalf of PI: Ann Vandenberg)

Director, Associate Professor of Medicine
Division of Geriatrics & Gerontology, Emory School of Medicine
Jason Adelman
Director, Associate Dean for Quality and Patient Safety
Center for Patient Safety Science, Columbia University

Moderator:

James Swiger
Health Scientist Administrator
Division of Digital Healthcare Research, Center for Evidence and Practice Improvement, AHRQ

Eligible providers can earn up to 1.5 CE/CME contact hours for participating in the live webinar.  
If you have questions, please contact DigitalHealthcareResearch@ahrq.hhs.gov.