JCAHO views medication reconciliation as adverse-event prevention

Abstract

No longer are new patients’ lists of currently taken medications to be treated as paperwork for someone to assemble and keep on file. Nor are lists of medications resumed after surgery or transfer to be followed without question. And those lists of discharge medications? The contents are really supposed to be communicated to someone. Through the National Patient Safety Goals, the Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO) is pushing hospitals and other health care providers to use, not just compile, medication lists whenever patients move to a new setting, service, or level of care and to ensure that those lists are complete. JCAHO National Patient Safety Goal 8—“Accurately and completely reconcile medications across the continuum of care”—aims to reduce the number of adverse drug events that occur when responsibility for a patient changes. For the most part, organizations with JCAHO accreditation have been allowed to phase in the goal, which was initially announced in mid-2004.