Preventing Errors and Promoting Safety Through Better Medication Management
 
Date: February 16, 2011
Time: 1:30 – 3:00 p.m., EST
Sponsored by the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality’s (AHRQ) National Resource Center for Health IT

This registration page is for MD's and DO's. Nurses, PA's, and other Health Care Professionals please click here to register so you receive the correct CME certificate

Presenters:

• Donna Horn, R.Ph., D.Ph., is the director of patient safety, Institute for Safe Medical Practices (ISMP) in community/ambulatory practice. She has over 25 years of experience in the retail/chain community pharmacy practice setting, most recently serving as the privacy officer and manager of regulatory affairs for Brooks/ Eckerd Pharmacy, where she wrote numerous policies and procedures to govern pharmacists working in chain pharmacy. Prior to joining ISMP, she served as president and chairman of the National Association of Boards of Pharmacy focused on patient safety, primarily on reducing medication errors in community pharmacy. Dr. Horn also served 11 years on the Massachusetts Board of Registration in Pharmacy as both a member and as president.
• Andrea M. Wessell, PharmD., B.C.P.S., C.D.E., is an associate professor at the Medical University of South Carolina and PPRNet (Practice Partner Research Network) investigator. PPRNet is a primary care practice-based research network among users of a common electronic health record (EHR) whose membership includes 180 practices in 42 States. Dr. Wessell served as a co-investigator of the “Medication Safety in Primary Care Practice – Translating Research into Practice” project in 20 PPRNet practices from 2007 to 2010. The project aimed to develop a set of prescribing and monitoring indicators relevant to primary care; to disseminate audit and feedback reports on the indicator set; and to evaluate the impact of a medication safety-focused quality improvement intervention in participating practices.
• Christoph “Chris” U. Lehmann, M.D., F.A.A.P., an associate professor of pediatrics, is a board-certified neonatologist in the Eudowood Neonatal Pulmonary Division at the Johns Hopkins University School of Medicine. He currently holds joint appointments in the divisions of health sciences informatics and dermatology at the school of medicine. He is the editor-in-chief of the Applied Clinical Informatics Journal. Dr. Lehmann served as the principal investigator on the 2-year AHRQ grant “Medication Monitoring for Vulnerable Populations via IT” and is one of the editors of the textbook Pediatrics Informatics. Dr. Lehmann serves as the secretary on the Board of Directors of the American Medical Informatics Association and served in the past on the Executive Committee of the Council on Clinical Information Technology of the American Academy of Pediatrics.  He is the director for clinical information technology of the Johns Hopkins Children’s Center and the founding director of the Child Health Informatics Center at the American Academy of Pediatrics.
• Judy Smetzer, R.N., B.S.N., is a vice president at the Institute for Safe Medication Practices (ISMP) in Horsham, PA. Prior to joining ISMP, Ms. Smetzer served as associate vice president at St. Luke's Quakertown Hospital in Quakertown, PA. During her 30-year career, Ms. Smetzer has advanced from a staff nurse to various management positions, increasingly focusing on quality improvement and risk management. She has served as a risk management consultant for long-term and community-based health care organizations, published many articles on medication error prevention in peer-reviewed journals, and is a contributing author of the handbook Mosby’s Nursing PDQ for Medication Safety. Ms. Smetzer serves as an author and editor of ISMP’s four newsletters for acute care providers, nurses, ambulatory/community care providers, and consumers. She also is an adjunct assistant professor at Temple University School of Pharmacy, teaching a course on medication error surveillance and control planning. Ms. Smetzer received a B.S.N. from Cedar Crest College.

Dr. Horn of the ISMP will begin the teleconference by providing an overview of important issues related to error reduction in the field of medication management. Dr. Wessell will present findings from a medication safety project she conducted. She developed an indicator for monitoring prescription errors and a program for disseminating feedback about the errors to medical practices. Dr. Lehman will present insights about using information technology to monitor medications for vulnerable populations. Lastly, Dr. Horn and Ms. Smetzer will present strategies that may assist pharmacies in implementing methods to actively reduce the risk of error; particularly with high-alert medication. In addition, they will also discuss tools that are currently being developed by the ISMP to reduce the risk of potentially adverse drug events.

Learning Objectives:

1. Outline the types of patient tools being developed for self management and decision making.
2. Describe how the use of these tools can improve patient outcomes.
3. Physicians will be able to describe how health information technology can be used to improve health care quality.
4. Physicians will be able to identify health information technology strategies to implement in their practice to improve health care decision making, support patient-centered care, and improve the quality and safety of medication management.

The Wisconsin Medical Society is accredited by the Accreditation Council for Continuing Medical Education (ACCME) to provide continuing medical education for physicians.

The Wisconsin Medical Society designates this educational activity for a maximum of 1.5 AMA PRA Category 1 CreditsTM.  Physicians should only claim credit commensurate with the extent of their participation in the activity.