Negligible impact of highly patient-specific decision support for potassium-increasing drug-drug interactions - a cluster-randomised controlled trial.

Background And Objective: Clinical decision support (CDS) might improve management of potassium-increasing drug-drug interactions (DDI). We studied CDS with five features intended to increase effectiveness: (i) focus on serious DDIs, (ii) fewer notifications, (iii) presentation of current laboratory results, (iv) timing (when adverse event becomes likelier), (v) removal of notification when appropriate.

Methods: We conducted a 1-year, hospital-wide, cluster-randomised controlled trial in the inpatient setting at a large tertiary-care academic medical centre. Three CDS types were implemented: monitoring reminders (unknown potassium, no monitoring ordered), elevated potassium warnings (≥4.9 mEq/l), and hyperkalaemia alerts (≥5.5 mEq/l). The primary endpoint was the frequency of potassium-monitoring intervals >72 h.

Results: We analysed 15,272 and 18,981 stays with 2804 and 2057 potassium-increasing DDIs in the intervention and control groups, respectively. Patient-specific notifications: displayed were 869 reminders (1 per 3.2 potassium-increasing DDIs), 356 warnings (1:7.9), and 62 alerts (1:45.2). Nevertheless, insufficiently monitored DDIs were not reduced (intervention 451 of 9686 intervals >72 h [4.66%]; control 249 of 6140 [4.06%]). The only secondary outcome improved was the length of potassium monitoring intervals (intervention group mean 22.9 h, control 23.7 h; p <0.001). However, in the intervention group, during 50 of 2804 observed potassium-increasing DDI periods (1.78%) one or more serum potassium values ≥ 5.5mEq/l were measured, in the control group, during 27 of 2057 (1.31%; p = 0.20).

Conclusions: A highly patient-specific CDS feature combination had a negligible impact on the management of potentially serious potassium-increasing DDIs and was unable to improve safety among hospitalised patients.