Most would agree that an accurate list of medications that patients are taking is a key component of safe, high quality healthcare. However, creating an accurate medication list (medication reconciliation) has proven to be incredibly difficult. It was thought that implementation of electronic health records would lead to improvements in accuracy of medication lists, but this has not proven to be the case. If you work with clinical informatics teams that include pharmacy concerns, chances are you’ll be working on the medication reconciliation process.
Briefly describe two factors that make accurate medication reconciliation difficult. What aspect of your two factors creates a roadblock to accurate medication reconciliation? Based on what you learned this week about drug terminologies, describe how use of National Drug Codes (NDC) and RxNorm facilitate creation of accurate medication lists.
