3 Ways Medication History for Reconciliation is Making Prescribing Safer

Imagine that you’re a hospital physician. Your patient, a new grandmother, has traveled hundreds of miles to visit her daughter and newborn granddaughter. But the day after her arrival, she twists her ankle on an early morning walk.

You’re about to prescribe a pain reliever for Grandmother’s twisted ankle, but something keeps niggling in the back of your mind.

Grandmother has already told you about the handful of medications she’s taking, but given her history of atrial fibrillation, you’re wondering if she’s missing something. After your examination, you ask again if she takes anything else.

“I don’t think so,” Grandmother replies. Then her eyes light up. “But my daughter might know!” You ask the nurse to find your patient’s daughter in the waiting room.

“Oh, yes,” the daughter says. “Mom got a new medicine, just last week from her primary care clinic down in Florida. Something called apixiban. Apparently, it’s a blood thinner for her irregular heartbeat.”

Now, equipped with this information—and your knowledge that apixiban could cause an adverse drug interaction with the pain reliever you’d wanted to prescribe—you now choose a different pain reliever.

As a hospitalist myself, this is an all-too-real scenario.

3 Ways Medication History for Reconciliation Enables Safer Prescribing

In the med rec process, not having all the patient’s clinical information, like a complete medication history, makes it that much harder to confidently prescribe a medication to treat the patient safely and effectively.

It’s like having to ask Grandmother’s daughter for the information you need and hoping that she has it—and that what she says is accurate and complete.

In contrast, Medication History for Reconciliation offers real-time, deduplicated medication history information from payers and pharmacies, and this is incorporated directly into the electronic health record (EHR) workflow.

1. Accurate information that includes cash-pay prescriptions

   Cash-pay prescriptions—those paid for without insurance—should not be overlooked.

   Claims data alone causes blind spots. Surescripts Medication History includes both pharmacy fill data and claims data, which means that these up-to-date medication histories include cash-pay prescriptions along with those paid for with insurance.

   This is how one of the largest public hospital systems in the U.S. gained full visibility on medication activity and reduced 30-day readmissions by 27% for high-risk patients.

2. Replaces tedious manual data entry

   In a recent report, 49% of physicians surveyed said they were burned out and in another, at least 1 in 4 prescribers indicate they are somewhat or very likely to leave their profession in the next year due to burnout.

   It has never been more critical to leverage med rec tools and technologies that will lessen the administrative burdens that are contributing to widespread clinician burnout, while maintaining the highest standards for patient safety.

   Having the patient’s up-to-date medication history means no more info hunting. And it means no more manual data entry, with an easy way to incorporate medication history directly into the EHR.

3. Fewer clicks in the EHR

   Innovations like Sig IQ were developed to translate the majority of free-text patient directions found on prescriptions into a clinically validated, structured format. This technology enhances medication histories to represent the patient instructions in a structured format that can be used and analyzed by the EHR, improving provider efficiency and patient safety.

   Ultimately, it means prescribers and pharmacists are spending less time on administrative tasks and saving prescribers from an eternity of mouse clicks to do the work of incorporating the structured instructions into the EHR’s medication list.

In 2023, Surescripts delivered a total of 2.97 billion medication histories.

Each one represents a path toward better-informed decisions with patients about their medications. Each one means more time and energy for providers to focus on what matters most: the grandmothers in their care.