Warfarin Patient Safety audit tool launched

 

PRIMIS launches a new FREE audit tool that helps practices undertake a patient safety audit on patients being treated with warfarin 

An exciting new audit tool, Warfarin Patient Safety, has just been released by PRIMIS that will help practices to audit their clinical data to look at the appropriateness of warfarin prescribing. This audit tool was developed with funding from Boehringer Ingelheim. 

The tool, which works with CHART, will assist practices in examining whether patients are achieving the optimum benefit from taking warfarin by calculating the amount of time their INR is within therapeutic range. Because the tool provides a bleeding risk score for each patient this allows clinicians to weigh a patient’s risk of bleeding against the benefits of anticoagulation for stroke prevention in those patients on warfarin because of atrial fibrillation. This is an important feature that will help practices meet draft recommendations put forward recently by NICE that urge GPs to adopt the HAS-BLED risk score to guide decisions on anticoagulation prescribing (new draft guideline on the management of atrial fibrillation).

As part of the release of the tool, PRIMIS has developed a brand new feature for the CHART summary sheet. Now, as well as the graphs and results produced from a practice’s data, the printable Warfarin Patient Safety summary sheet also includes an easy-to-follow, narrative report of the practice’s results and a call to action.

Warfarin is the most commonly used oral anticoagulant and requires frequent monitoring of a patient’s International Normalised Ratio (INR). This audit tool has been designed to assist in examining whether patients are benefitting from taking warfarin by calculating the amount of time their INR stays within therapeutic range. This helps practices to determine therapeutic efficiency and subsequently identify those at increased risk of stroke or mortality.

Using Warfarin Patient Safety

The Warfarin Patient Safety audit tool works with the software analysis tool, CHART, which is used in general practice to support the extraction and analysis of data from electronic patient records. 

Benefits to practices

The Warfarin Patient Safety audit tool has many features that will be of benefit. It will:

• enable practices to undertake a warfarin patient safety audit on all patients who are established on warfarin
• calculate time in therapeutic range (TTR) to help assess whether patients are benefitting from taking warfarin
• identify patients with out of range INRs of >5 and >8 in line with the British Committee for Standards in Haematology safety indicators
• identify patients who may benefit from a medication review
• calculate bleeding risk for each patient using the HAS-BLED scoring system helping clinicians to make an informed assessment regarding anticoagulation therapy
• automatically generate a summary of suggested actions for the practice
• highlight patients without a coded reason for being on warfarin and/or without a coded annual warfarin assessment

 

Important information about CHART for Warfarin Patient Safety

Please note: a new version of CHART has been released to coincide with the Warfarin Patient Safety audit tool. You MUST upgrade to the latest version otherwise this audit tool will not work. To check for the latest version, click on the ‘Check for updates’ link within the CHART home screen. Full details on how to download and install CHART and check for updates are detailed on the CHART webpage.

 

Anyone who is a new PRIMIS Hub member and is downloading CHART for the first time in order to use this audit tool will automatically obtain the latest version of CHART.

Development of the tool

The development of the Warfarin Patient Safety audit tool has been funded by Boehringer Ingelheim. Boehringer Ingelheim has undertaken a medico legal review but PRIMIS has retained editorial control and intellectual property right for this audit tool.

How to obtain Warfarin Patient Safety

Warfarin Patient Safety is freely available to all members of the PRIMIS Hub. Basic membership is free of charge and includes access to Warfarin Patient Safety, CHART and CHART Online and several other audit tools.

Existing Hub members can download Warfarin Patient Safety by opening CHART and clicking on ‘Check for updates’. Please remember to download and install the latest version of CHART before you obtain the audit tool.

For more details on PRIMIS Hub or to become a member please see Become a member.

More information

Please see the dedicated webpage for Warfarin Patient Safety for more information, documentation and details on how to obtain the tool.