Comparing the Efficiency and Accuracy of Health Information Exchange (HIE) to the Traditional Process of Medication Reconciliation during Admission at the Pima County Adult Detention Center (PCADC)

Abstract

Objectives: To assess the change in efficiency and accuracy of the medication reconciliation process at the Pima County Adult Detention Center (PCADC) after implementation of a Health Information Exchange (HIE) and also to identify the percentage of patients whose medication data is available in the HIE Methods: This program evaluation was a retrospective comparison of the traditional self-reported method of medication reconciliation to the HIE method. It compared the number and types of medication discovered for each patient using the traditional medication reconciliation collection data (the self-reported method) and the new database query method (HIE method) Results: 200 samples were randomly selected (100 random detainees and 100 with known medical record in the HIE database) to participate in the study. A total of 150 patients (61%) were retrieved from the HIE database, of which 100 were from the control group and 50 from the random group. The total numbers of medications that these 150 patients contributed was 284. Mean completeness of self-reported medications was 54% while HIE yielded an average of 99% (χ2; p<0.0001). 9 patients (4%) had both self-reported medications and medications within the HIE database in which 17 medications (62%) compared to the self-reporting method with 14 medications (52%) sharing the same name. There were no medication dose matches between self-reported medications and HIE queried medications. Conclusions: The addition of an HIE database to the existing self-reporting process of collecting a detainee’s medication reconciliation provides a more comprehensive and accurate medical record