Patient Alerts

When certain risk conditions occur, SafeScript raises an alert against a patient's profile to draw attention to the risk. Each alert is immediately highlighted to the practitioner whose prescribing or dispensing triggered the alert. A patient's alerts can also be viewed against their medication history, and in a historic alerts list.

An alert on a patient's profile provides information to help you identify high-risk circumstances. You are still responsible for your own clinical decisions; SafeScript does not prevent you from prescribing or dispensing medicines you consider to be clinically necessary.

Multiple prescribers

This alert is generated if the patient has been prescribed monitored drugs by four or more prescribers at four or more medical practices in the last 90 days.

Multiple pharmacists

This alert is generated if the patient has been dispensed monitored drugs by four or more pharmacies in the last 90 days.

Opioid dose threshold

Opioid drugs monitored in SafeScript are assigned an MED (morphine-equivalent dose) value. There are two variants of this alert:

  • High risk: The patient has been dispensed opioid drugs that, once combined with the opioid drug you are proposing to prescribe or dispense, will cause their calculated average daily MED to exceed the high-risk threshold of 100mg.

  • Medium risk: The patient has been dispensed opioid drugs that, once combined with the opioid drug you are proposing to prescribe or dispense, will cause their calculated average daily MED to be between 50mg and 100mg.

    Records within the last 30 days indicate that [patient name] may be receiving opioids exceeding 50mg MED daily. There is a substantial risk of harm, including opioid toxicity and overdose. Counsel the patient on the risks of high dose opioids and to look for the signs of opioid toxicity.

The calculation is based on the patient's prescriptions received within the last 90 days.

High-risk drug combinations

This alert is generated when the patient is prescribed certain combinations of drugs within the last 90 days. The current combinations that will generate this alert are:

  • Methadone + benzodiazepines

  • Methadone + long-acting opioids

  • Fentanyl + benzodiazepines

  • Fentanyl + long-acting opiods

When you prescribe or dispense a monitored drug to a patient, if the action triggers any alerting rules, you will receive a red SafeScript notification.

  1. Click the notification, to launch the SafeScript portal in your browser.
  2. Select your username, and enter your PIN (or, log in if you have not yet logged in on this device today. For details, see Log In and Set a Quick-Access PIN).
  3. You are taken directly to the patient's profile.

    The new alert is highlighted at the top of the patient's profile.

    SafeScript records that you have viewed the alert.

    The next time you view the patient, the alert will no longer be highlighted. It will still be available in the patient's medication history and alert history.

  1. Search for and Select a Patient.
  2. In the patient's medication history, an alert icon is displayed to the left of any event that triggered alerts.

  3. Select to expand the medication event to view the details of the alert(s) triggered by this event.

  1. Search for and Select a Patient.
  2. From the patient's profile, select View Alert History.

    If the patient has never triggered alerts, the button is labelled No Alert History, and cannot be selected.

  3. The patient's alert history is displayed.

    For each alert, the following details are displayed:

    • The Date the alert was triggered by a medication event.
    • The alert Description.
    • The Type of alert (that is, the alerting rule that was triggered).
    • An estimate of the clinical Risk Level of the alert.

  4. To close the window, select OK.