Characterization of Pediatric Inpatient Penicillin Allergy Documentation and Evaluation

Abstract

Drug allergies may be improperly or incompletely characterized in the allergy section of the electronic health record (EHR). This can contribute to unnecessary avoidance of a drug or drug class such as penicillins which has significant implications on clinical care and healthcare utilization. We aim to characterize the documentation of penicillin allergy in the EHR of a pediatric center and hypothesize few patients admitted with penicillin allergy are referred for allergy evaluation.