Accuracy of pharmacist electronic discharge medicines review information transmitted to primary care at discharge

Background The poor quality of discharge summaries following admission to hospital, especially in relation to information on medication changes, is well documented. Hospital pharmacists can record changes to medications in the electronic discharge note to improve the quality of this information for primary care. Objective To audit the pharmacist-completed notes describing changes to admission medication, and to identify improvement opportunities. Setting 750-bed teaching district general hospital in England. Methods An evaluation of pharmacist written notes was conducted at a 750-bed teaching district general hospital in England. A sample of notes was analysed in three consecutive years, 2016–2018. Analyses were performed using descriptive statistics. Main outcome measure The number of discrepancies in the note compared to the discharge summary medication list. Results Notes were analysed for 125, 120 and 120 patients in 2016–2018 respectively. We saw an overall improvement in the accuracy of our notes from 12% of patients having an inaccurate note in 2016 to 4.2% in 2017 and 5.8% in 2018. The percentage of discharge medicines affected by these discrepancies reduced from 1.7% (2016) to 0.6% (2017) and 0.9% (2018). Conclusion Discrepancies were due to changes in the patient’s medicines journey not being fully captured and documented. The overall reduction of discrepancies over the three consecutive audits was felt to be largely due to formalisation of the discharge medicines reconciliation process and reminding staff on how to complete a note. We are planning to utilise informatics surveillance tools along with system developments to sustain this elimination of out of date notes being transmitted to primary care.