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4CPS-072 Who’s first? Prioritisation of prescription validation in the emergency room

ejhpharm · 2026-03-18 · canonical JSON source

17 visible annotations · policy: published · automated confidence ≥ 75.00%

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Background and Importance WHO estimates a projected shortfall of 11 million health workers by 2030, mostly in low- and lower-middle income countries.Therefore, tasks optimisation and/or prioritisation are necessary for the near future.Chronic complex patients (CCP) are more likely to have worse health outcomes compared to the rest of the population.High alert medications (HAM) are drugs that bear a heightened risk of causing significant patient harm when they are used in error.Aim and Objectives Evaluate the impact of an automatic prioritisation algorithm (APA) for prescription validation in the Emergency Room (ER).Material and Methods An APA was available for the hospital pharmacy team from March 2025. Said APA lists patients according to clinical variables (renal failure, dyselectrolytaemia, etc.) and prescription reconciliation variables (omission of chronic medication, polypharmacy, omission of administration of relevant drugs, etc.), assigning a score. Theoretically, the higher the score, the higher the benefit of prescription validation.We conducted the study in a non-monographic tertiary care hospital.From June to September 2025, eight days were randomly chosen.On four of those days, two pharmacists selected 10 patients per day from the morning shift in the ER, using the APA (APA group).On the remaining 4 days, the same pharmacists randomly selected 10 patients per day from the same shift (random group).Pharmacist interventions and presence of high alert medication were recorded and compared between the two groups using Chi-squared test in STATA. The APA also identified CCP.Results Comparing the 40 patients in each group, APA group led to more interventions (13 vs 2, p<0.01) and the patients had HAM prescribed more often (16 vs 7, p<0.01).22 CCP were identified pre-validation in the APA group while none were in the non-APA.Conclusion and Relevance The use of the APA multiplied sixfold the number interventions per patient.Since CCP were identified beforehand and more HAM were detected, interventions were made in better candidates using the APA.If there is insufficient time to validate every prescription, this APA will maximise the impact of our work in the ER.Conflict of Interest No conflict of interest