CAPS Joins the Fight Against Medication Errors

Chicago, Illinois, October 15, 2010—Medication errors are one of the most widespread and preventable causes of harm in modern healthcare. Now Consumers Advancing Patient Safety (CAPS) and more than a dozen other leaders in the field are teaming up to promote best practices to prevent them.

Together with Joint Commission, the Society of Hospital Medicine and other leaders in hospital healthcare, CAPS has endorsed a new white paper that gives hospitals practical recommendations for implementing system-wide medication reconciliation programs.

The white paper, Making Inpatient Medication Reconciliation Patient Centered, Clinically Relevant, and Implementable: A Consensus Statement on Key Principles and Necessary First Steps, is available via the following link.

It will also be published in the Journal of Hospital Medicine.

“Medication reconciliation can be a complex challenge to tackle,” says Mitchell Dvorak, CAPS executive director. “The new white paper gives clinicians, quality and safety personnel, and regulatory agencies practical steps for reducing medication-related preventable harm.”

The white paper identifies ten key areas for improvement in medication reconciliation and provides actionable “first steps” for addressing each.

It closes with “Patient safety and patient/family-centered care must be the principal drivers in the development of medication reconciliation implementation systems,” a sentiment echoed by Dvorak, and emphasizes that medication reconciliation must be seen as a patient safety issue, not simply about accreditation. “Ultimately, this is about using a team-based approach to provide the best possible care to every hospitalized patient.”