Adverse drug events (ADEs) are an important cause of patient injury. Although most medications are prescribed and used in the outpatient setting, prevention efforts focus on the inpatient setting, partly because of limited data on outpatient events. We describe and evaluate a new system for surveillance of outpatient ADEs treated in hospital emergency departments (EDs).
Epidemic Intelligence Service, Office of Workforce and Career Development, Division of Healthcare Quality Promotion, Centers for Disease Control and Prevention, Atlanta, Georgia, USA. MJhung@cdc.gov
