Medication reconciliation: Harvard Pilgrim Health Care's approach to improving outpatient medication safety.

Hospitals and long-term care facilities have been addressing the issue of patient safety for some time. As a result of the increasing number of outpatient medication errors leading to adverse drug events (ADEs), interest in preventing outpatient medication errors has increased. Research indicates that the rate of outpatient ADEs may be about four times as high as that reported in hospital studies and that more than one third of these events are preventable (Gandhi et al., 2003). Harvard Pilgrim Health Care introduced its Medication Reconciliation Program in an effort to enhance patient safety by improving medication use and safety.