Is it time for greater patient involvement to enhance transitional medication safety?

In this issue of BMJ Quality & Safety, Schnipper et al report the effects of a refined evidence-based toolkit and mentored implementation of a complex medication reconciliation intervention, ‘MARQUIS2’, at 18 North American hospitals.1 This pragmatic quality improvement study used interrupted time series analysis to quantify the effects of implementation on medication discrepancy rates relative to baseline trends. The MARQUIS2 toolkit was developed by refining the earlier MARQUIS1 toolkit, shown to be associated with a reduction in medication discrepancies but with inconsistent improvement among the five study sites.2 In brief, subsequent changes made to MARQUIS1 included (1) addition of simulated cases as training materials and to assess competency in taking a best possible medication history (BPMH), (2) greater use of pharmacy technicians to take BPMHs, (3) provision of advocacy aids, for example, return-on-investment calculators, to promote resourcing of medication reconciliation, (4) changes to electronic health...
Source: Quality and Safety in Health Care - Category: Health Management Authors: Tags: Editorials Source Type: research