Reviews

Medication Reconciliation

A systematic review is in progress to review primary studies done to evaluate medication reconciliation (MedRec), specifically involving the use of a health information system (HIS). The two areas of interest are impacts on provider productivity and patient safety.

Scope

• primary studies
• health care settings: physician office, community pharmacy, community clinic, hospital
• study designs: experimental, quasi-experimental/observational with control groups, observational without control groups
• HIS: e.g., electronic medical record, electronic health record, electronic prescribing
• use of HIS in manual medication reconciliation
• use of HIS to perform entire medication reconciliation process
• outcomes: types and frequencies of discrepancies/errors
• process: time to perform reconciliation activities, coordination effort

Out of Scope

• secondary studies or literature reviews
• studies which do not specifically address medication reconciliation
• studies which do not involve the use of an HIS
• economic impacts

Approach

Following Systematic Reviews: CRD's Guidance for Undertaking Reviews in Health Care developed by the Centre for Reviews and Dissemination, The University of York, the following steps will be undertaken:

• Develop review protocol
• Prepare review materials
• Pilot and review protocol
• Finalize resource needs
• Conduct systematic review
  • Search literature and select studies for inclusion
  • Perform quality assessment
  • Extract data
  • Synthesize information
• Draft report and papers

Outputs

A final summary report and publishable paper(s) on the review process and results will be prepared.

Timeline

This review will be completed in June 2009.

References

Centre for Reviews and Dissemination, University of York. (2009). Systematic Reviews: CRD's Guidance for Undertaking Reviews in Health Care. York: CRD, University of York. Retrieved April 17, 2009, from http://www.york.ac.uk/inst/crd/systematic_reviews_book.htm.