Background: The 2009 AAPCC NPDS report identified 1,057,632 medication identification requests to poison information centers. This represents 24.7% of all calls to US poison information centers. To reduce the impact of medication identification requests on a poison information center, a regional poison information center developed and implemented an automated medication identification system that utilized an interactive voice response (IVR) system. The objective of this project was to describe how the IVR affected the regional poison information center medication identification request call volume and workload of the staff.
Methods: All documented medication identification request inquiries from January 1, 2007 through June 30, 2011 were extracted from the RPIC Visual Dotlab electronic medical record system. Descriptive statistics, presented as means, were used to characterize the monthly call volume inquiries.
Results: Over the 18 months (January, 2007 to June, 2008) preceding the implementation of the IVR medication identification request system, a mean of 4,389.6 medication identification requests per month required manual electronic documentation by SPI. In the immediate 12 months (August, 2008 to July, 2009) following the IVR medication identification request system implementation, a mean of 2132.6 inquiries per month (54% reduction) were managed by the IVR. During the 12 month period of July, 2010 through June, 2011, the combined monthly mean of medication identification requests documented by SPI and the IVR decreased to a total of 686.7 compared to the mean pre-implementation monthly total of 4,389.6.
Conclusions: The IVR medication identification request system was successful in reducing the number of medication identification requests that required manual electronic documentation by SPI and freed up a substantial amount of time for SPI to perform other critical patient care-related responsibilities. The enhanced technology that was implemented to improve efficiency came with the unintended consequence of discouraging the public from using the RPIC medication identification service as extensively.