Largely underreported in all care settings, adverse drug events (ADEs) caused by medication discrepancies are estimated to affect as many as 40% of hospitalized patients and up to 17% of patients in the 30 days following discharge. DrFirst and the Society for Hospital Medicine, through its MARQUIS Med Rec Collaborative, announced they will work with hospitals to reduce these discrepancies in the medication reconciliation process—one of the most important steps to improve patient safety during transitions of care.
Why Improving Medication Reconciliation Is Critical to Patient Safety
“It’s critically important that clinicians have accurate and usable medication histories to help protect patients from dangerous ADEs and save time tracking down and typing in information, which can introduce errors,” said G. Cameron Deemer, president of DrFirst. “As part of our long-standing promise to help improve patient safety through technology, we are committed to working with MARQUIS to help clinicians follow best practices that improve their medication reconciliation quality.”
Medication reconciliation is a critical patient safety process. When done well, it significantly lessens the risk of adverse drug events. The process is recommended every time a patient has a transition of care, such as being admitted or discharged from a hospital. Accurate medication reconciliation is a National Patient Safety Goal of The Joint Commission.
SHM’s MARQUIS Med Rec Collaborative, which measures “unintentional medication discrepancies per patient” for quality improvement purposes, is endorsed by the National Quality Forum (NQF) and is the official Leapfrog measure for medication reconciliation. The Collaborative is helping hospitals nationwide reduce unintentional medication discrepancies that lead to adverse drug events and patient harm. Participating hospitals identify medication reconciliation process gaps, develop and implement better ways to prescribe and document medications, and measure improvement over time.
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Building on insights gained from the 2018 Multi-Center Medication Reconciliation Quality Improvement Study (MARQUIS), which demonstrated a consistent 9% reduction in medication history discrepancies per month, DrFirst will customize The Collaborative’s current toolkit. The integration illustrates how its MedHx solution—the healthcare industry’s broadest source of medication history data available, which yields faster and more accurate medication reconciliation—can be combined with best practices in medication history-taking to achieve breakthrough reductions in medication discrepancies. After the customized toolkit is distributed and implemented, the MARQUIS Collaborative will take a cohort of DrFirst hospital clients through a 14-month quality improvement program.
DrFirst also will provide hospitals and ambulatory clinicians that use its MedHx solution with evidence-based tools to prescribe, document, and reconcile medications accurately and reduce ADEs.
Source: HIT Consultant
