The majority of patient EHRs may contain medication information that is not up to date, according to a study published in the American Journal of Managed Care.
Medication reconciliation — the process of comparing a patient's medication orders to the medications they have been taking — is valuable in inpatient settings, at transitions of care and in ambulatory settings, where discrepancies between physician medication orders in the EHR and what the patients actually take frequently occur, according to the authors.
The researchers reviewed 609 patient records containing 2,947 medications. Of these, 47.5 percent had discrepancies, and 59.3 percent of those discrepancies appeared only in the EHR and 40.7 percent only in the pharmacy claims.