When I’m calculating the percent of medications with an error, do I count just the medications on the home list or include any new meds ordered too?
Since the primary initial focus of this reconciling initiative is on how accurately home medications are ordered at admission, we recommend using the number of medications on the home medication list you develop as the denominator. Your review would attempt to identify how many of those were accurately ordered at admission (or annotated to reflect reason to discontinue (or change dose, etc). The review of medications at discharge involves looking at the accuracy of discharge orders for that same list of home medications as well as the last set of medication orders from the patient’s MAR. Hospitals moving to the next phase of implementing reconciling at discharge would then expand the number of medications in the denominator to include both the home med list and any additional medications last set of medication orders from the patient’s MAR.
