Hospital Creates Electronic Medication List to Achieve Consistency, Help Patients

An electronic tool and institution buy-in

Richholt and Karmali then turned their focus to constructing a tool to help monitor the patients' medication lists at admission and discharge.

In September 2008, despite the lack of electronic medical records being used at the facility and with the help of the IT department, the team developed the medication reconciliation application using a Microsoft application.

"The most important part of developing the tool was putting together a multidisciplinary team," says Richholt.

CEO Nancy Farber appointed a multidisciplinary medication safety committee. Richholt chaired the committee composed of physicians, nurses, pharmacists, and other members of the executive team. Having a multidisciplinary team helped with buy-in from the entire institution and during the implementation stage, says Richholt.

Throughout the developmental process, the team ran multiple pilots with varying versions of the electronic tool. "The application was piloted using a limited ¬number of physicians, and then [we] rolled it out to the entire unit," says Richholt.

Every time unit members provided feedback to the team, team members made changes and modifications to the tool until they were confident of the results.

In May 2009, WHHS arrived at a tool that the team felt was good enough to implement on every unit. Upon admission, the patient's medications are entered into the computer, where they are verified by a pharmacist, and then available for the physician to review.

"The physicians now have a certain level of confidence knowing the information they are getting is accurate and complete," says Karmali.

For more information, please see the upcoming March issue of Briefings on Patient Safety, a product of Patient Safety Monitor.