It is important to track three types of measures when you are working to improve the safety of medication systems:

Outcome Measures
These measures tell you whether changes are actually leading to improvement — that is, helping to achieve the overall aim of reducing harm to patients from adverse drug events (ADEs). Examples include Adverse Drug Events (ADEs) per 1,000 Doses and Percent of Admissions with an Adverse Drug Event (ADE).

Process Measures
To affect the outcome measure of reducing harm, you will make changes to improve many core processes in the medication system — including the processes for ordering, dispensing, administering, and reconciling medications — as well as changes to improve the culture as it relates to safety and reporting errors. Measuring the results of these process changes will tell you if the changes are leading to an improved, safer system. Examples include Percentage of Staff Reporting a Positive Safety Climate and Pharmacy Interventions per 100 Admissions.

Balancing Measures
Use these measures to make sure that changes to improve one part of the system aren’t causing new problems in other parts of the system. For example, the change of making patients responsible for checking their own medications might result in a decrease in satisfaction for some patients.

Click here for more information and general tips on Forming the Team, Setting Aims, Selecting Changes, or Testing Changes.