Children on the ketogenic diet must limit carbohydrate intake to maintain ketosis and reduce seizure burden. Patients on ketogenic diet are vulnerable to harm in the hospital setting where carbohydrate-containing medications are commonly prescribed. We developed clinical decision support to reduce inappropriate prescription of carbohydrate-containing medications in hospitalized children on ketogenic diet.

A clinical decision support alert was developed through formative and summative usability testing. The alert warned prescribers when they entered an order for a carbohydrate-containing medication in patients on ketogenic diet. The alert was implemented using a quasi-experimental design with sequential crossover from control to intervention at two tertiary care pediatric hospitals within a single health system. The primary outcome was carbohydrate-containing medication orders per patient-day.

During the study period, there were 280 ketogenic diet patient admissions totaling 1219 patient-days. The carbohydrate-containing medication order rate declined from 0.69 to 0.35 orders per patient-day (absolute rate reduction 0.34, 95% confidence interval 0.25-0.43), corresponding to 256 inappropriate orders prevented. The alert fired 398 times and was accepted (i.e., the order was removed) 227 times for an overall acceptance rate of 57%.

Implementation of a clinical decision support alert at order-entry resulted in a sustained reduction in carbohydrate-containing medication orders for hospitalized patients on ketogenic diet without an increase in alert burden. Clinical decision support developed with user-centered design principles can improve patient safety for children on ketogenic diet by influencing prescriber behavior.