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What is Medication Reconciliation?
Sacred Heart Medical Center has always promoted safe, effective, patient-centered, timely, efficient and equitable health care to our community. Over the past year, we have participated in a nationwide initiative called the
100K Lives Campaign
that had the goal of deploying six proven interventions on a very broad scale to save an estimated 100,000 lives by June 14, 2006. This goal was exceeded by 22,300, but the campaign continues. |
One of those six interventions is medication reconciliation, the effort to
eliminate medication errors that occur primarily at transition points in the health care setting. Transition points occur when a patient moves from one doctor to another, from a doctor to a hospital, from a hospital to a clinic, from a doctor to a dentist, and so on. Medication mistakes occur when patients take the wrong pill, too many pills, not enough pills, or the wrong combination of medications, supplements, over-the-counter drugs, and seemingly harmless herbal medications and remedies.
Medication errors can be very serious and lead to complications, admission to the hospital or even death. The good news is that patients and family members can help prevent medication errors.
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