Medication reconciliation: Prescriptions from multiple providers provide room for error

The importance of medication reconciliation is obvious. When taken together, certain medicine combinations can cause harmful effects. Therefore, keeping an updated record of all the medicines a patient is taking, and the dosage of each, is essential for their well-being.

Reconciliation wouldn’t be much of an issue if a patient only went to a single provider for care, or if information was transferred seamlessly. However, this is rarely the case.

Patients move or change doctors, go to nearby ERs or urgent care clinics for emergencies, and can be prescribed medicines from various healthcare specialists. And even within an organization, medication reconciliation can fail when a patient is handed off between providers or if someone doesn’t correctly input the information in the electronic health record.

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