ASHP And APhA Working Together On Medication Reconciliation Issues

Main Category: Pharmacy / Pharmacist
Article Date: 22 May 2008 - 14:00 PDT

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The American Society of Health-System Pharmacists (ASHP) and the American Pharmacists Association (APhA) have been working together to help pharmacists improve the medication reconciliation process.

Medication reconciliation is a key interest of both organizations and their members. "Transitions of care can lead to serious breakdowns in communication and cause dangerous, even deadly, medication problems," said Henri R. Manasse, Jr., Ph.D., Sc.D., ASHP executive vice president and CEO. "That's why it's so important for ASHP and APhA to collaborate on this issue, to harness the best thinking of experts from across pharmacy practice settings to improve the system and save lives."

Practitioner members of the two organizations met in February 2007 in a full-day session to collaborate on several initial steps and set the stage for continued progress. "There are many common issues on this subject between our two organizations that we can address together to affect real change for patient safety," said John A. Gans, Pharm.D., APhA executive vice president and CEO. As part of this meeting, the organizations developed a shared vision and definition of medication reconciliation and recommended next steps for both groups.

Shared Vision

The organizations created a shared vision of medication reconciliation for purposes of the workgroup. The vision specifies the key roles that pharmacists should play in medication reconciliations, including providing leadership as medication experts, being a vital information and education resource to both patients and healthcare professionals, and being an advocate for patients as they move within the healthcare continuum.

Shared Definition

To achieve clarity and focus, the workgroup identified a shared definition of medication reconciliation and went on to specify key elements that should be included in the process.

Medication reconciliation is the comprehensive evaluation of a patient's medication regimen any time there is a change in therapy in an effort to avoid medication errors such as omissions, duplications, dosing errors, or drug interactions, as well as to observe compliance and adherence patterns. This process should include a comparison of the existing and previous medication regimens and should occur at every transition of care in which new medications are ordered, existing orders are rewritten or adjusted, or if the patient has added non-prescription medications to their self-care.

Recommendations

The workgroup created several recommendations for APhA and ASHP regarding priorities and strategy when working with the organizations' members, peer organizations, and other healthcare organizations. These recommendations include developing tool kits and demonstration projects, sharing information with patients and other healthcare providers, educating pharmacists about their leadership role, engaging organizations concerned with IT and quality issues, as well as supporting and cataloging research and literature that supports pharmacists' role in medication reconciliation.

Next Steps

ASHP and APhA will continue to address this important issue, both collaboratively and independently, based on the shared vision and definition, as well as the recommendations, identified by the workgroup. This collaboration allows both organizations to best affect change, meet the needs of members, and in turn, educate and collaborate with other key stakeholders. Working together, APhA and ASHP intend to identify meaningful solutions to the critical problem of medication reconciliation throughout the continuum of care.

American Society of Health-System Pharmacists