Medication process compliance in pediatric inpatients - Time to the first

Objective: For most medical conditions, reducing the time between intent to treat and actual treatment is beneficial. The goal of this study was to determine the current state of the medication process at a university-affiliated children's hospital. We also intended to investigate variations in order-to-administration intervals according to hospital location, medication, scheduled time, and patient age. Method: We used the enterprise data warehouse (EDW) to collect medication process data using ordering, scheduling, and administration timestamps. We calculated the intervals for medication process components (o rdering to d ispensing and to a dministration) and analyzed the respective distributions. Results: We identified an association of the medication process intervals with the order-type, verification requirements, patient unit, Anatomical Therapeutic Chemical (ATC) class of the ordered medication, scheduled hour, and patient age. Conclusion: Meaningful information can be obtained from the analysis of medication process timestamps and computed intervals identifying areas for improvement. Institution-wide analytics of EDW repository data may measure the "health" of the medication process.