How often do you do med reconciliation?

[KSU-SN]

The agency I work for just started having us do medication reconciliation every 2 weeks and after every doctor appt. we have always done it at every SOC, ROC, and recert. They say if we do not do it every 2 weeks and after doctor appts and document it on the care plan we will be written up. Just wondering what other agencies are doing about medication reconciliation? Is this common to do so often? I feel like I'm constantly having to do this and the patients are getting fed up with having to pull out all their meds and us go over them so often.

[caliotter3]

Overkill if you ask me. If your assigned nurses, or primary nurse, are on the ball, there is no reason that recert time (and SOC/ROC) would not be sufficient. That is how my current agency does it as well as most of the agencies I've worked for.

[Libby1987]

Our policy is every visit, not that it realistically happens that often but that is the goal.

If the meds are truly reconciled, patients are informed as to our state requirements and the need for our med list to exactly match the meds they take with organized storage then taking a glance at their organized meds every visit isn't that difficult. In fact, once I performed the above, most patients or their caregivers proactively displayed their meds to me and it took a couple of minutes if that.

Those that refuse to cooperate are simply documented as such, it's their right after all.

For kicks, pick a couple of patients who are complex, who have some chaos in their lives, and have frequent changes in their treatment. Pull their meds every visit and see if you catch any discrepancies.

Our patient acuities are so high that frequent med reconciliation is not unreasonable. If you've primarily got stable patients, consider yourself fortunate if that's your preference, but our patients have a lot going on, they are essentially med surg level patients and they test the skills of our RNs.

[HDHRN]

I usually do it every visit. And I stress to my LPNs to keep me updated on any new medications. I always did that when I was an LPN. I wanted my case managers to be up to date on all those.

[Isabelle49]

I suspect the agency you work for has been dinged by the State when a survey was done.

[artsmom, BSN, LPN]

Our policy is each visit. This is not practical but I try my best. Cardiac/high acuity patients I do the rec each time, things change often and I don't want them confused about anything. Daily wound care that I am the primary nurse for? I will do it weekly unless there's been an MD appt. As another poster suggested this policy was changed to daily after the state brought it up we weren't addressing meds enough.

[leannarn]

Medications should be reviewed and documented as such every visit.