Table 2.
Prescribing crude error rates and adjusted incidence rate ratios (IRRs) for the SWCRCT (short-term impact of eMM).
| Control (Paper) | Intervention (first 70 days of eMM) | IRR (95% CI)a (eMM vs Paper) | P valuea | |
|---|---|---|---|---|
| All clinical prescribing errors | – | |||
| Number of patients | 1686 | 2096 | ||
| Number of medication orders | 9635 | 16,734 | ||
| Number of clinical prescribing errors | 1399 | 2942 | ||
| Error rateb per 100 orders (95% CI) | 14.52 (13.78–15.30) | 17.58 (16.96–18.23) | 1.05 (0.92–1.21) | 0.45 |
| Potential ADEs (clinical prescribing errors with a potential severity score ≥3) | ||||
| Number of potential ADEs | 353 | 812 | ||
| Error rateb per 100 orders (95% CI) | 3.66 (3.30–4.07) | 4.85 (4.53–5.20) | 1.62 (1.28–2.04) | <0.001 |
| Clinical prescribing errors involving high-risk medications | ||||
| Number of patients with high-risk medication orders | 799 | 1228 | ||
| Number of high-risk medication orders | 1200 | 2274 | ||
| Number of clinical prescribing errors involving high-risk medications | 232 | 390 | ||
| Error rateb per 100 high-risk medication orders (95% CI) | 19.33 (17.00–21.99) | 17.15 (15.53–18.94) | 0.88 (0.66–1.16) | 0.35 |
| All procedural errorsc | ||||
| Number of patients with procedural errors reviewed | 1162 | 1429 | ||
| Number of medication orders | 6698 | 11,441 | ||
| Number of procedural errors | 7652 | 7699 | ||
| Procedural error rateb per 100 orders (95% CI) | 114.24 (111.71–116.83) | 67.29 (65.81–68.81) | 0.65 (0.61–0.70) | <0.001 |
aAdjusted incidence rate ratio (IRR), 95% CIs and P values from generalised linear mixed models adjusting for patient age, study time, and clustering by ward (unit of randomisation) and patient. ADE is adverse drug event.
bCrude error rates and 95% CIs are from simple Poisson models.
cProcedural errors were assessed from a random sample comprising 68.5% of patients during the entire SWCRCT period. Details of changes in procedural errors by error type are in Supplementary Tables 1 and 2.