North Country Hospital Quality Improvement Initiative
Project 2 Patient Safety
Project Name: Reconcile patient medications throughout continuum of healthcare encounters
Time Frame: Project start - 2005
Operational - beginning 2006
Goal: Conduct medication reconciliation to completely and accurately reconcile patient medications across the continuum of care. Create a process for obtaining a list of patient medications currently taken upon admission through discharge with the collaboration of the patient, family members, primary care physicians and medical records. Having up-to-date information on patient medications allows physicians to make better prescribing decisions to optimize pharmacological therapy and increase patient safety by lessening the chance of medication omissions or suboptimal medication combinations.
Interventions: Final forms used to track medications from previous healthcare provider discharge to current admission through current discharge were developed and iteratively improved until considered appropriately effective. Physician education and eventual buy-in was achieved through constant communication.
Pre Intervention
- Pre project implementation - no medication reconciliation routinely performed
Post Intervention
- 100% medication reconciliation performed and documented in patient chart. Further, discharge medication lists given to patients for reference when continuing healthcare services.
- Every inpatient has a form that tracks medications upon admission, medications to be continued as home medications, those that are discontinued and new medications prescribed on discharge which ultimately provides the patient with an accurate up-to-date list of all medications taken.
Supplemental documentation
Current Medication Reconciliation Form
Instructions for Using Form |
