Pharmacists and Pharmacy Technicians to Improve Admission Medication History Accuracy

We tested two interventions to improve the accuracy of medication histories obtained at hospital admission. The interventions target elderly and chronically ill patients prone to erroneous medication histories and resultant medication errors. For targeted patients, we tested the effect of using pharmacists and pharmacy technicians to obtain an initial medication history. This was studied using a randomized controlled trial of usual care (which involves nurses and physicians) vs usual care + pharmacists vs usual care + pharmacy technicians to obtain an admission medication history. The overarching hypothesis was that by leveraging pharmacists and pharmacy technicians we can minimize admission medication history errors and related downstream events.