Using EHR Data to Detect Prescribing Errors in Rapidly Discontinued Medication Orders.

Background: Previous research developed a new method for locating prescribing errors in rapidly discontinued electronic medication orders. Although effective, the prospective design of that research hinders its feasibility for regular use.

Objectives: Our objectives were to assess a method to retrospectively detect prescribing errors, to characterize the identified errors, and to identify potential improvement opportunities.

Alert dwell time: introduction of a measure to evaluate interruptive clinical decision support alerts.

Metrics for evaluating interruptive prescribing alerts have many limitations. Additional methods are needed to identify opportunities to improve alerting systems and prevent alert fatigue. In this study, the authors determined whether alert dwell time-the time elapsed from when an interruptive alert is generated to when it is dismissed-could be calculated by using historical alert data from log files.