BACKGROUND/OBJECTIVES Hospitalized older adults are at risk of receiving potentially inappropriate medication (PIM) doses, driven in part by age‐independent dose defaults used by electronic health records (EHRs), leading providers to prescribe for older adults as they do for younger adults. We studied whether an automated EHR‐based medication support tool would reduce PIM dosing for hospitalized older adults. DESIGN Pre‐post study design. SETTING Tertiary care, level 1 trauma, academic medical center in Oregon. PARTICIPANTS Hospitalized adults 75 years and older in the inpatient, nonemergency setting prescribed medications with geriatric‐specific dose considerations. INTERVENTION An EHR‐based, automated set of evidence‐based, age‐specific dose and frequency defaults called the Geriatric Prescribing Context (GPC). MEASUREMENTS The process measure is percentage of orders consistent with geriatric dose recommendations, and outcome measures are average dose (AD) in milligrams and total daily dose (TDD) in milligrams in the 12 months before and after implementation. RESULTS Use of recommended geriatric doses with the context improved for all 10 of the most commonly ordered medications. In the year after implementation, there was a trend toward decreasing TDD and AD across all drug classes. CONCLUSION The GPC is a simple, elegant, and effective means to align prescribing practices with safety standards for older adults, improving prescribing safety for all. It works within the current prescriber workflow without triggering alert fatigue and requires minimal resources for development and maintenance.

The impact of a novel Geriatric Prescribing Context (GPC) on hospital clinicians’ prescribing workflows is still unknown. A cross-sectional survey was distributed to 346 inpatient pharmacists, physicians, and advance practice providers employed at three pilot site hospitals affected by the GPC to assess awareness and impact to usual workflow. The GPC, a set of medication default doses and frequencies for patients 75 years and older, was unnoticed by 74% of survey respondents ( n = 119) with pharmacists more likely to be aware of the context than prescribers. The impact of the GPC on clinicians’ workflow differed by setting, with academic respondents reporting no change or decreased time to write or verify orders, and community respondents reporting no change or increased time to write or verify orders. The GPC has smoothly integrated into usual prescribing workflows for both prescribers and pharmacists and both overall reported positive responses to the implementation.

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