Medical Reconciliation as a Patient Safety Strategy |Biomedgrid

Patient Safety has increasingly been receiving attention over the last couple of decades due to a combination of legal suits against hospitals due to negligent care, which could have been avoided, and an increased awareness in the medical community that steps can be taken to mitigate issues which could compromise a patient's health. The Joint Commission on Accreditation of Healthcare Organizations (JCAHO), an accrediting non-governmental body that accredits the vast majority of hospitals and other medical facilities in the United States on the quality of the medical standards, has listed comprehensive medication reconciliation as one of its 2015 National Patient Safety Goals [2]. JCAHO further states, “There is evidence that medication discrepancies can affect patient outcomes.”