With a growing number of hospitals using autoverification tools for medication orders, pharmacy departments must implement certain safety measures and help define best practices and standards for using the technology, the ASHP Autoverification Working Group concludes in a new report in AJHP.
Nearly three-quarters of hospitals surveyed by ASHP report using an electronic health record (EHR) tool that automatically verifies certain medication orders without a pharmacist review.
Yet despite its widespread use, autoverification lacks an established set of best practices and guidelines and is allowed only under very specific circumstances under federal regulations. Some health systems are testing rules-based autoverification algorithms that can enhance the efficiency of medication order review.
The ASHP working group, which met last year, discussed guiding principles for implementing autoverification and recommended next steps for organizations, including meeting with state boards of pharmacy to discuss potential benefits and processes implemented to ensure patient safety.
“Those wishing to scale use of autoverification are somewhat in a catch-22 where there is not yet enough experience to inform practice standards and regulatory and accreditation acceptance, but the evidence base cannot be built without implementation,” the group says in the report. “Accreditation organizations usually will adopt a standard of practice, but there may be a gap during the proof of concept phase of adoption, where best practices are still being defined.”
The report identifies foundational elements that are critical to the successful adoption of autoverification, including reliable patient information, such as drug allergies and weights, and basic clinical decision support tools, such as drug-allergy and drug-drug interaction checking.
“Autoverification provides an opportunity to leverage technology to shift pharmacist time from more routine tasks to in-depth review and management of more complex or critical medication orders,” the work group says. “However, as with the adoption of any new technology, before those benefits can be realized, safety and quality must be validated.”
The working group’s report is available now online and will be published in the Dec. 1 issue of AJHP.
