Medicines reconciliation at hospital admission into an electronic prescribing program

Abstract

Objective: To describe and to analyse a new method of integrated medicines reconciliation in an electronic prescribing program results. Method: 12-month, prospective, observational, non-randomized and uncontrolled study, in which all patients who were admitted, during that year, to a general hospital of 450 beds. The electronic prescribing program was used for medication reconciliation as a means to multidisciplinary approach (nurses, doctors, pharmacists). This reconciliation was done at the time of hospital admission and reconciliation errors were measured. Results: A total of 23 701 patients were included, with 53 920 medications being reconciled, of which 48 744 (90.4%) had no discrepancies and 5 176 (9.6%) had discrepancies: 4 731 (8.7%) justified and 445 (0.8%) not justified. The majority of unjustified discrepancies were due to the drugs in use at home not recorded well on the hospital admission record in 310 (69.7%), prescription omissions in 105 (23.6%) and duplications in 30 (6.7%). In any case the reconciliation errors reached patients. Conclusions: Using an electronic prescribing program and an interdisciplinary approach in the reconciliation of chronic medication, medication reconciliation at the time of hospital admission is achieved in 98% of patients, showing medication errors only in 1.3% of patients.

Keywords

• Drugs
• Reconciliation
• Electronic
• ; Prescribing
• ; Admission