Table 1.

Frequency Distribution of Alerts

Rule	Alerting Criterion	No.* (%)
1	Hematocrit has fallen 10% or more since last result and is now less than 26%†	38 (19.8)
2	Serum glucose is greater than or equal to 400 mg/dL	34 (17.7)
3	Hematocrit has fallen 6% or more since previous result, and has fallen faster than 0.4% per hour since last result, and is now less than 26% and the patient is not on the cardiac surgery service†	32 (16.7)
4	Serum potassium is greater than or equal to 6.0 mEq/L	32 (16.7)
5	Serum potassium has fallen 1.0 mEq/L or more over the last 24 hours and is now less than 3.2 mEq/L‡	29 (15.1)
6	Serum potassium less than 3.3 mEq/L and patient has an active order for digoxin‡	15 (7.8)
7	Serum sodium is greater than 160 mEq/L	5 (2.6)
8	Serum sodium has fallen 15 mEq/L or more in last 24 hours and is now less than 130 mEq/L§	4 (2.1)
9	Serum glucose is less than or equal to 40 mg/dL	3 (1.6)
10	Hematocrit is less than or equal to 15%†	0 (0)
11	Serum potassium is less than or equal to 2.4 mEq/L‡	0 (0)
12	Serum sodium is less than or equal to 115 mEq/L§	0 (0)
	Total	192 (100)

^*Combined number of occurrences in control and intervention groups, after exclusions.

^†For low or falling hematocrit, rule 1 takes precedence over rule 3, which takes precedence over rule 10.

^‡For low or falling potassium, rule 5 takes precedence over rule 6, which takes precedence over rule 11.

^§For low or falling sodium, rule 8 takes precedence over rule 12.