Effect of integrated medicines management on quality of discharge medication information-a secondary endpoint in a randomized controlled trial

High-quality discharge information is important to promote patient safety when patients are transferred from hospital to primary care. Patients with multiple long-term conditions are especially vulnerable to insufficient transfer of medication information, as they use many medications and have compl...

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Bibliographic Details
Published in:International journal for quality in health care 2024-12, Vol.36 (4)
Main Authors: Mathiesen, Liv, Nguyen, Tram Bich Michelle, Dæhlen, Ingrid, Mowé, Morten, Lea, Marianne
Format: Article
Language:English
Subjects:
Aged
Aged, 80 and over
Female
Humans
Male
Medication Reconciliation - standards
Middle Aged
Multimorbidity
Norway
Original
Patient Discharge
Patient Safety
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Summary:High-quality discharge information is important to promote patient safety when patients are transferred from hospital to primary care. Patients with multiple long-term conditions are especially vulnerable to insufficient transfer of medication information, as they use many medications and have complex interactions with the healthcare services. The aim of this study was to investigate the effect of integrated medicines management provided to hospitalized multimorbid patients on the quality of the discharge medication information. Multimorbid patients ≥18 years, using a minimum of four regular medications from a minimum of two therapeutic medication classes were recruited from the Internal Medicine ward, Oslo University Hospital, Norway, from August 2014 to March 2016 and randomly assigned, 1:1, to the intervention or control group. Intervention patients received integrated medicines management throughout the hospital stay. Control patients received standard care. This paper reports the results of a prespecified secondary endpoint analysis of the randomized controlled trial; the difference between the intervention and control group in the quality of discharge medication information. The analysis population comprised 384 patients. Integrated medicines management improved the discharge summary quality score of the medication information from 5.8 ± 1.5 to 8.6 ± 2.6 [mean difference 2.7, 95% confidence interval (CI) 2.3-3.2, P 
ISSN:1353-4505
1464-3677
1464-3677
DOI:10.1093/intqhc/mzae100