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Table 4 Timeliness of documentation of prescription changes in the record of the primary care provider

From: In-hospital prescription changes and documentation in the medical records of the primary care provider: results from a medical record review study

Documentation

Starta

n = 220

Stopb

n = 77

Dose/freq changec

n = 87

Switchd

n = 24

Total

n = 408/331f

Prescription overview

Number of days, median (IQR)e

2 (0–16)

n/ag

5 (0–33)

2 (1–14)

3 (0–18)

≤ 1 day

64 (29.1%)

n/a

15 (17.2%)

6 (25.0%)

85 (25.7%)

≤ 2 weeks

99 (45.0%)

n/a

24 (27.6%)

12 (50.0%)

135 (40.8%)

≤ 3 months

129 (58.6%)

n/a

37 (42.5%)

16 (66.7%)

183 (55.3%)

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Number of days, median (IQR)e

7 (4–14)

3.0 (1–9)

4 (1–24)

2 (1–8)

5 (2–14)

  1. aA new medication was added
  2. bA medication was stopped
  3. cThe dose or frequency of a medication was changed
  4. dThere was a switch from one medication to another in the same medication group
  5. eMedian number of days before documentation of the prescription change. Undocumented prescription changes are not included in this analysis
  6. fThis number is the total number of prescription changes. Second number is the number of prescription changes that should have been documented (minus ‘stop’). Only the prescription changes that should have been documented are used for calculating percentages
  7. gIn this category, timeliness could not be assessed, since when a prescription is stopped, this can only be assessed in the PCP’s record after 3 months,, when we could see in the prescription overview of the PCP that the patient did not receive the stopped prescription as a recurrent prescription (since the PCP had stopped the prescription)