Development and impact of a computerized pediatric antiinfective decision support program

• HIT Description: Computerized pediatric anti-infective management program; Electronic health record More info...
  
• Purpose of Study: Measurement of the impact of a pediatric antiinfective computerized decision support tool.
  
• Years of study: 1998-1999
  
• Study Design: Pre/Post
  
• Outcomes: Rates of pharmacist interventions for erroneous drug doses, days of sub therapeutic and excessive-doses of anti-infective, costs of anti-infective doses, and adverse drug events.
  

• Settings: Pediatric intensive care unit (PICU) of an academic children's medical center
• Intervention: Required usage of a pediatric antiinfective decision support tools by physicians and pediatric nurse practitioners.
• Evaluation Method: Data collected from clinical pharmacists, computerized alerts and reports, and survey of clinical users of the system.
• HIT System: Adaptation of an existing adult anti-infective clinical decision support tool for pediatric use, developed in 1998.
• System Penetration: Obligatory use for all anti-infective orders in the PICU
• Healthcare Utilization: Decreased robust estimated costs of antiinfective use by 9% in the intervention group vs. control ($86.60 vs. 78.43).
• Quality of Care and Patient Safety Outcome: Decreased number of patient days of subtherapeutic or excessive antiinfective doses (p < 0.001).
• Changes in efficiency and productivity: Decreased number of orders per patient-antiinfective course.
• Time needed to accrue benefit: 6 months