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Teamwork, support from top leaders help boost compliance with med rec

Quality Improvement Monitor, March 21, 2008

Teamwork, clear definitions of each clinician's roles and responsibilities, and strong support from senior leaders propelled medication reconciliation compliance rates from the 40th percentile to the 97%-100% range at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago.

"We were struggling like any other organization," says Kristine Gleason, RPh, clinical quality leader at Northwestern. "It really took an organizational group to come together and say, 'We're not going to do this just because The Joint Commission [formerly JCAHO] says we have to. We're going to do it because it's the right thing to do.' "

Gleason, together with Molly McDaniel, PharmD, Northwestern's former patient safety research pharmacist, and another staff member from the quality department, launched a medication reconciliation team in 2006 to improve performance. McDaniel and Gleason have since written a book, Medication Reconciliation: Practical Strategies and Tools for Joint Commission Compliance, Second Edition, that is published by HCPro.

"We were hovering at the 40% compliance rate and not getting anywhere," McDaniel says. "Instead of staying with the same process, we said, 'We're going to start from scratch.' "

Access the full story in the March issue of Quality Improvement Report; access is free for subscribers, nonsubscribers can purchase a copy of the story for $10.

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