NCT01337063

Multi-Center Medication Reconciliation Quality Improvement Study

• Status: Completed
• Phase: N/A
• Study type: Interventional
• Enrollment: 1,836 (actual)
• Sponsor: Brigham and Women's Hospital · Academic / Other
• Sex: All
• Age: 18 Years
• Healthy volunteers: Not accepted

Summary

Patients often have problems after they leave the hospital, in part because errors are made in the medications they are prescribed. The goal of this project is to develop a more accurate and safe medication prescription process when patients enter and leave the hospital and implement this process at six U.S. hospitals. The investigators will measure the success of the project and develop lessons learned so this process can be applied to other hospitals.

Detailed description

Unintentional medication discrepancies during transitions in care (such as hospitalization and subsequent discharge) are very common and represent a major threat to patient safety. One solution to this problem is medication reconciliation. In response to Joint Commission requirements, most hospitals have developed medication reconciliation processes, but some have been more successful than others, and there are reports of pro-forma compliance without substantial improvements in patient safety. There is now collective experience about effective approaches to medication reconciliation, but these have yet to be consolidated, evaluated rigorously, and disseminated effectively. This project's findings should provide valuable lessons to all hospitals regarding the best ways to design and implement medication reconciliation interventions to improve medication safety during transitions in care. SPECIFIC AIMS: Aim 1: Develop a toolkit consolidating the best practice recommendations for medication reconciliation Aim 2: Conduct a multi-center mentored quality improvement project in which each site adapts the tools for its own environment and implements them Aim 3: Assess the effects of a mentored medication reconciliation quality improvement intervention on unintentional medication discrepancies with potential for patient harm Aim 4: Conduct rigorous program evaluation to determine the most important components of a medication reconciliation program and how best to implement it

Conditions

• Adverse Drug Events
• Medication Administered in Error

Interventions

Type	Name	Description
OTHER	Mentored medication reconciliation quality improvement	Based on expert recommendations from a recent conference on medication reconciliation sponsored by the Society of Hospital Medicine and funded by AHRQ, investigators will engage a steering committee and conduct a second conference to operationalize these recommendations into a set of "best practice" guidelines, standards, and tools to be adapted by each of 6 participating sites. After training mentors and developing data collection tools, a mentored quality improvement project will be conducted for 21 months, in which each site works to improve medication reconciliation using the toolkit and with mentorship in the form of two site visits and monthly phone calls.

Timeline

• Start date: 2011-03-01
• Primary completion: 2014-09-01
• Completion: 2014-09-01
• First posted: 2011-04-18
• Last updated: 2015-11-13

Locations

6 sites across 1 country: United States