Abstract

To determine the percentage of unintentional prior-to-admission (PTA) medication list discrepancies captured by second-source verification. A prospective, randomized, controlled intervention was conducted on all patients admitted to a large academic medical center with a PTA medication list completed by a pharmacy technician from December 2018 through January 2019. Excluded patients included those admitted as observation status or discharged prior to the time of second-source verification. The following data was collected: patient's medical record number, age, admission date and time, service admitted to, date and time of completed PTA medication list, date and time of second-source verification, type of second-source verification, medication name, dose, route, frequency, formulation, and confidence level of pharmacy technician completing the initial PTA medication list. Second-source verification was conducted on all medications from a patient's PTA medication list after completion by a pharmacy technician. There were a total of 992 medications from the 200 randomly assigned patients with a completed PTA medication list by a pharmacy technician during the study time frame. Of these medications, 116 (11.7%) contained a discrepancy identified by second-source verification. The most common type of discrepancy was omission (67%) followed by dosing, frequency, and formulation. The median time to complete second-source verification was 9 minutes (interquartile range, 5-17 minutes). Second-source verification at the time of hospital admission helps identify medication discrepancies and may improve medication use safety and prescribing pattern and, accordingly, may contribute to reducing medication errors.

Full Text
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