Initiatives

Discussion Topics: Implementing Reconciling Processes

Reconciling Medications Collaborative participants have had the opportunity to share experiences with their implementation activities at two Collaborative Learning sessions and via a listserv established for participating Massachusetts hospitals. This section has been designed to share some of the discussion that has taken place.

These discussion notes represent a collection of input from a variety of sources, and are provided as a guide to help accelerate your implementation activity. However, nothing here is meant to serve as a substitute for your own professional judgement. We hope you will use the examples and references provided to guide your improvement efforts, and share modifications and additional tools with the Learning Collaborative. Please share any feedback with us!

We are appreciative of the many organizations that have shared their materials in the spirit of promoting patient safety and reducing medical errors. The Coalition and MHA are particularly grateful to the Institute for Healthcare Improvement (IHI) for sharing their rapid-cycle improvement strategies and successful reconciling implementation programs of hospitals participating in their worldwide improvement collaboratives. Please use attributions included with any example materials so those who have volunteered to share their resources may get credit for their hard work.

Review of overall process to complete reconciling

Assigning responsibility for creating the home list

Responsibility for completing reconciling

Time frames for completing reconciling

Enhancing the reconciling form

Putting form in consistent, highly-visible location in patient chart

Choosing where to start

Special issues for reconciling in the ED

Automating the reconciling process

Using the reconciling form as an order sheet

Improving accuracy of home med lists

Providing medication cards for patients

Accelerating Change

Measurement

JCAHO 2005 NPSGs Include Medication Reconciliation

Partnering With Patients/Families

Survey Results

Contact the Collaborative to provide input or for information on these and other topics:
Julie Polovina – Phone: 781-272-8000 ext. 221 – Email: JPolovina@macoalition.org

This collaborative is supported in part by grant number 5 U18 HS011928 from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality (AHRQ)

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