Development of Medical Record Query Application for HOSxP for Pharmacy Service in Chiangkhan Hospital, Loei Province

Abstract

Background: This research focused on studies in three components of medication errors, including prescribing error, pre-dispensing error, and dispensing error, which were crucial problems in pharmacy services, especially high-alert drugs such as warfarin. It was found that Chiangkhan Hospital, Loei Province, Thailand, still needed more efficient supporting tools for workers, resulting in a small amount of data in the medication error reporting system and inconsistency with the actual amount of problems.

Objectives: To develop the medical record query application for HOSxP and evaluate  pharmacy services’ efficiency when using this application in Chiangkhan Hospital, Loei Province.

Methods: This research was action research conducted in one cycle through stages of planning, acting, observing, and reflecting.

Results: There were 6 steps in program development consisting of problem analysis by researchers and gathering opinions from the Pharmacy and Therapeutic Committee, application design, programming in computer language, application testing and editing, generation of application documentation and application maintenance. The results showed that this application could detect more prescribing and pre-dispensing errors, increasing from 0.94 and 2.18 per 1,000 prescriptions to 2.58 and 4.81 per 1000 prescriptions, respectively. In addition, the decreases in dispensing error (from 1.87 to 0.56 per 1,000 prescriptions) and the patient waiting time in dispensing pharmacy (from 30.26±11.84 to 12.90±5.74 min; N=150 and 150, p<0.001) were reported. The application users (N=13) were satisfied at the highest level, with a satisfaction score of 4.69±0.48 based on a 5-point scale.

Conclusions: The medical record query application connected to the HOSxP program could detect and make medication errors more manageable, reduce waiting time for receiving medicine and highly satisfy the users.