Department of Community Medicine and General Practice, Norwegian University of Science and Technology NTNU, MTFS, Trondheim, Norway. liv.j.wekre@ntnu.no
The objective of this study was to investigate whether implementation of multidose drug dispensing (MDD) for elderly outpatients is associated with a change in the number of discrepancies in the medication record at the general practitioners (GPs) and at the community home-care services.
A controlled follow-up study with paired design of patients' medication records was performed during implementation of MDD. Medication records from the home care units and from the GPs were reviewed, and the discrepancies were noted. The discrepancies were rated into four classes based upon the potential harm, and a risk score system was applied, giving the potentially most harmful discrepancies the highest score.
Medication records from 59 patients with a mean age of 80 years were included. The number of discrepancies was reduced from 203 to 133 (p