Beyond Medication Reconciliation

Medication reconciliation is a major focus of quality measurement activities, and according to The Joint Commission, primary care clinicians are expected to reconcile a patient's medications at every visit. In principle, medication reconciliation is quite important; in practice, however, it has failed to have a demonstrable effect on patient outcomes. This may partly be because the lack of agreement about what constitutes medication reconciliation makes it difficult to decide when it has occurred and therefore difficult to study its effect.