Improving medication safety through the use of metrics.

Purpose: Describe medication safety metrics used at University HealthSystem Consortium (UHC) institutions and recommend a meaningful way to report and communicate medication safety information across an organization.

Methods: A cross-sectional study was conducted using an electronically distributed, open-ended survey instrument.

Results: Twenty percent of the UHC institutions responded to our survey. Seventy-seven percent of those institutions responding to our survey reported their organization has defined metrics to measure medication safety; an additional 21% of the institutions were still in the process of defining metrics. Of metrics that were reported, 33% were true medication safety metrics. Results are distributed to a wide variety of institutional venues.

Conclusion: Institutions should take several actions related to medication safety including defining local metrics; building metrics addressing preventable adverse drug events, medication errors, and technology; and reporting results to a variety of venues in order to design specific interventions to improve local medication use.