New Study on Inpatient Medication Reconciliation Errors

Summary: Inpatient medication reconciliation was made a National Patient Safety Goal in 2005 and nationwide attention was soon focused on the issue of errors in these medication records as patients move in and out of hospitals. However, a new study from Brigham and Women's Hospital has shown that inpatients experience and average of one and a half potentially harmful errors in their records during the course of their hospital stay. The study also attempted to identify the frequency of specific kinds of errors, at what point during a patient's stay these errors occur, and factors which put a patient at risk for errors to occur.

Comment: Dr. Jeffrey Schnipper, MD, MPH senior author and Hospitalist at BWH stated his hope that, "This information can help guide hospitals in determining where to focus their efforts for addressing this problem." He also noted that patients today are often on more medications than they have been in the past, raising the stakes along with the risks. Information collected by this study will, no doubt, have a significant effect in reducing the frequency of these errors, thus reducing the risk for all patients.

Read article - Brigham and Women's Hosptial. August 14, 2008.