For Immediate Release

November 3, 2006

Mercy Reduces Risk of Medication Errors and Gains International Spotlight

Oklahoma City and Ardmore — With as many as 50 percent of all medication errors and 20 percent of adverse drug events occurring nationwide when patients are transported from one area of a hospital to another, Mercy Health Center in Oklahoma City and Mercy Memorial Health Center in Ardmore are taking measures to reduce the risk.

And as part of those efforts, the Sisters of Mercy Health System—a 20-hospital system based in St. Louis, Missouri—was recently the first health care facility ever awarded an international honor for introducing an innovative business model to change the process of how medications are administered. International companies competing for the supply chain innovator award from the Council of Supply Chain Management Professionals included: IBM, Hewlett-Packard, Proctor & Gamble, Kellogg’s and Dow Chemical.

“For our patients, this means we are doing everything possible to avoid errors of transcription, omission, duplication and drug-to-drug interaction,” said Donna Poole, BSN, RN, Mercy’s nursing informatics coordinator and lead author of an article that was recently published in the Journal for Healthcare Quality—a well-known hospital quality journal. “We don’t want anything to fall through the cracks.”

As a part of the Institute for Healthcare Improvement’s 100,000 Lives Campaign—aimed at improving patient care and preventing avoidable deaths—Mercy has put medication reconciliation in place. Also called med-recon, the process ensures that prescribed and over-the-counter drugs a patient is taking at the point of admission to a health care facility is documented and either continued or discontinued in the hospital. Med-recon also comes into play whenever a patient is transferred to another area of the hospital or another facility, as well as being discharged from the hospital.

When a Mercy nurse first assesses a patient, a complete list of all of the patient’s home meds is gathered and entered into a computer. A printout of that information is then placed in the patient’s chart for the doctor to review.

The physician checks a box to indicate whether a med is to be continued or discontinued during a patient’s hospital stay. Meds that are continued and any new meds doctors may have added on admission are entered into the pharmacy system by a pharmacist. An up-to-date list of current meds is uploaded to the patient’s online medication record.

“Medication reconciliation ensures that information isn’t getting missed,” said Jennet Dugger, RN, Mercy Memorial’s nursing informatics coordinator in Ardmore. “We are checking and double-checking to make sure patients are taking the correct medicines and correct dosages at the correct time. It’s a team effort that involves everyone—from the doctors to the nurses to the pharmacy.”

Medication reconciliation is a continual process of updating and reviewing a patient’s course of medications throughout their hospital stay.

“Med-recon improves patient safety, decreases adverse drug events and helps us offer the best care possible,” said LeAnn Graham, Mercy clinical pharmacist and co-leader of Mercy’s medication reconciliation project.

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Mercy Health Center in Oklahoma City and Mercy Memorial Health Center in Ardmore are members of Mercy Health System of Oklahoma and the Sisters of Mercy Health System.