4 It is estimated that the medication reconciliations completed on admission in a large health care system were accurate approximately 40% of the time. Medication reconciliation is defined in the United States by the Institute for Healthcare Improvement as “the process of identifying the most accurate list of a patient's current medicines-including the name, dosage, frequency, and route-and comparing them to the current list in use, recognizing any discrepancies, and documenting any changes, thus resulting in a complete list of medications, accurately communicated.” 3 This process compares the patient's home medications with their medications on admission, transfer, or discharge to and from an inpatient facility.
Ongoing staff education and assessment of the improved protocol may further increase accuracy in the medication-reconciliation process at this hospital. The accuracy of medication reconciliation in this analysis was 80%, compared with 45% from the previous study ( P = 0.0011).ĭiscussion: Personnel training and protocol updates led to a statistically significant increase in the accuracy of the hospitals medication-reconciliation process. Results: The investigator identified 44 patients during the collection period and compared the results to the previous study, before the enhancements in the medication-reconciliation process. Patients were interviewed and their home pharmacy was contacted to determine whether the information collected during the initial medication-reconciliation process was correct. These data were collected at least 24 hours after admission. Data, including medication, dosage, route, and frequency, were collected from randomly selected patients (13 years and older) admitted during the 2-month study period. Methods: The primary outcome of the study was an assessment of the accuracy of the updated medication-reconciliation protocols. The investigators examined the updated process to identify gaps in patient care during the admission medication-reconciliation process. This process included an update to existing medication-reconciliation forms, staff education, and the standardization of all protocols involved.
Subsequently, a new process was developed to improve this area of patient care. A previous evaluation conducted at the site indicated that 45% of medication reconciliations were correct. This study was designed to identify areas for potential improvement in the medication reconciliation process for an 80-bed, inpatient psychiatric hospital. Introduction: How to improve medication reconciliation has been an ongoing discussion in hospitals across the nation.
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