Pharmacologic agents used in the diagnosis, cure, mitigation, treatment, or prevention of disease.

Data Element

Medication Administered Performer
Description

Indicates who or what performed the medication administration and how they were involved.

Comment

CDC's comment on behalf of CSTE for USCDI v5

 CSTE also strongly agrees that the ability to exchange data on prescribing of opioid medications in particular is of great importance to public health programs which aim to reduce opioid overdoses and deaths.

CDC's Consolidated Comment for USCDI v5

 

  • ** ADD THIS USE CASE TO SUBMISSION **

     
  1. "Medication Opioids": Unintentional injuries are the leading cause of death for Americans aged 1–44 years. The leading cause of death for unintentional injury is poisoning, specifically drug overdose. Overdose deaths continue to climb each year and accelerated during the COVID-19 pandemic. The majority of national overdose deaths involve opioids. Many patients receive their first exposure to opioids following surgery, and dentists are the leading prescriber of opioids among adolescents aged 10-19 and second-leading prescriber among young adults aged 20–29. In 2004, an estimated 3.5 million patients had wisdom teeth extracted. Filled opioid prescriptions after wisdom tooth extraction is associated with higher odds of persistent opioid use among opioid-naïve patients. Better understanding prescribing habits can help identify risk factors and particularly vulnerable populations.
  2. "Medications Antibiotics": More than 2.8 million antimicrobial-resistant infections occur in the United States each year, and more than 35,000 people die as a result. When Clostridioides difficile is added to these, the US toll exceeds 3 million infections and 48,000 deaths. The threat of antibiotic resistance undermines progress in health care, food production, and life expectancy. Addressing this threat requires preventing infections in the first place, slowing the development of resistance through better antibiotic use, and stopping the spread of resistance when it develops. Research shows that dentists overuse antibiotics, particularly for patients who are underinsured. Dentists prescribe 10% of all outpatient antibiotics, although there is significant geographical variability. Better understanding prescribing practices, knowledge, and beliefs can aid in the development of meaningful antimicrobial stewardship efforts addressing case selection and areas of practice.

NACCHO Supports CDC's recommendation.

Please include Medication Administration elements in USCDI v4

  • The record of an actual administration of a medication to a patient is one of the most central healthcare use cases.  Currently a suite of Medication administration-related concepts are in the Level 2 section of USCDI.   All of these are central healthcare components so the longer the data for these concepts remain wildly unstandardized in US EHRs, the longer there will be no realistic expectation of interoperability. There are many strong justifications for need of standardized structured data of this concept the clinical research/regulatory sphere, one of which I make below. 
  • However, I want to emphasize these elements are not niche needs for a few research requirements.  These are the center of patient-provider data exchange and the continued lack of standardized representation of these concepts should be the single driving reason for their inclusion in USCDI version 4.
  • Healthcare use case: The lack of any standardized representation of administration of medications inherently prevents interoperability of this information and restricts critical sharing of this information across health systems (such us in those qHINs participating in TEFCA).  Lack of easy sharing of administered drugs can result in serious, sometimes lethal, misjudgments on patient medication usage.
  • An FDA/clinical research context: Retrospective analyses of healthcare data are becoming a more common tool in clinical research for safety or efficacy for new indications of existing medications. In such analyses there may be one or more “exposure” drugs (ie, the drug of interest) and one or many “concomitant” medications. Researchers and regulatory reviewers will need to know enough information of the status of a drug administration where applicable. This information will supply critical differential information with which a researcher or regulatory reviewer can assess the relative probability of the listed drug record actually resulting in consumption by the patient. They can then determine the utility of the information in the context of the specific research and evidence generation needs of any given clinical study.

CDC's Consolidated Comment

Additional Technical Specifications: HL7 FHIR Health Care Surveys Content Implementation Guide (http://hl7.org/fhir/us/health-care-surveys-reporting/2022Jan/); HL7 FHIR Central Cancer Registry Reporting Content Implementation Guide (http://hl7.org/fhir/us/central-cancer-registry-reporting/2022Jan/).

Unified Comment from CDC

  • Additional Use Case: Information about medications prescribed, administered, and reasons for prescribing are collected as part of CDC's routine nationally notifiable condition surveillance for HIV, tuberculosis and sexually transmitted diseases. This information is collected to understand trends in treatment initiation and completion (as applicable), and as part of a health department's case management work.
     
  • Number of stakeholders who capture, access, use or exchange this data element: All US States and DC are funded through CDC’s Division of HIV Prevention, Division of TB Elimination and Division of STD Prevention flagship Notice of Funding Actions to perform surveillance activities, including collection of these data for surveillance purposes.
     
  • Healthcare Aims: Improving patient experience of care, Improving health of populations, Reducing cost of care, Improving provider experience of care
     
  • Use of data element: Extensively used in production environments
     
  • Exchange of data element: The Multiple Chronic Conditions eCare Plan project successfully tested this element at the Sep 2020 and Jan 2021 FHIR connectathons and has implemented it at the OHSU testing site. 
     
  • CSTE supports inclusion of this measure into USCDI v3: helpful for PH to know if treatment was administered or prescribed to indicate a need to contact patient and connect with other wraparound services/linkage to care (e.g., STIs, Hepatitis C/B)

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