This Article  • Full text  • PDF  • Send to a friend  • Save in My Folder  • Save to citation manager  • Permissions  Citing Articles  • Contact me when this article is cited  Related Content  • Related articles  • Similar articles in JAMA  Topic Collections  • Patient Safety/ Medical Error  • Adverse Effects  • Medication Error  • Alert me on articles by topic

	Since this article does not have an abstract, we have provided the first 150 words of the full text and any section headings.

To the Editor: Dr Hennessy and colleagues¹ found that retrospective drug utilization review was not associated with any decrease in the rates of potential prescribing errors or hospitalizations. They also reported that these programs have changed little since 1996. Thus, it is possible that these results merely reflect ineffectiveness of "traditional" retrospective drug utilization review programs, which tend to have overly simplified criteria.

Unfortunately, the authors did not provide detailed definitions of such possible prescribing errors. For instance, many review criteria specify that patients should not receive more than 1 opioid analgesic at a time. Rather than this simple rule, however, several factors should be considered (eg, number of days of overlapping opioid therapy, diagnoses, number of physicians prescribing the opioids, and number of pharmacies filling the prescriptions) to identify the most appropriate course of action. Although Hennessy et al had access to medical claims data, it is not clear . . . [Full Text of this Article]

Robert Berringer, PharmD; Ellen Friedla, PharmD, MPH; Karen Rich, PharmD
Heritage Information Systems Inc
Richmond, Va

RELATED ARTICLES

Evaluation of Drug Utilization Review Programs
Dale B. Christensen, William H. Campbell, Thomas R. Fulda, Mark C. Pugh, David H. Smith, Earlene E. Lipowski, Elgene W. Jacobs, Julie W. Kuhle, and Robert A. Crittenden
JAMA. 2004;291(2):185.
EXTRACT | FULL TEXT  

Evaluation of Drug Utilization Review Programs—Reply
Sean Hennessy, Warren B. Bilker, Anita L. Weber, Colleen Brensinger, and Brian L. Strom
JAMA. 2004;291(2):185-186.
EXTRACT | FULL TEXT  

Retrospective Drug Utilization Review, Prescribing Errors, and Clinical Outcomes
Sean Hennessy, Warren B. Bilker, Lan Zhou, Anita L. Weber, Colleen Brensinger, Yanlin Wang, and Brian L. Strom
JAMA. 2003;290(11):1494-1499.
ABSTRACT | FULL TEXT