2023 Leapfrog Hospital Survey – Hard Copy Section 2: Medication Safety
70 Version 9.0 First Release: April 1, 2023
© 2023 The Leapfrog Group Updated Release: July 21, 2023
Table of Contents
Step 1: Identify Patients to Include in the Sample (Survey Coordinator)
a) To be scored on the rate of unintentional medication discrepancies, hospitals are required to sample
at least 30 patients from a 6-month reporting period. Hospitals that sample fewer than 30 patients
during the reporting period will be scored and publicly reported as “Some Achievement.”
b) All hospitals should exclude patients under 18 years old, patients who were discharged or expired
before the Gold Standard Medication History could be obtained, and patients that do not have
discharge orders written during the reporting period.
c) Hospitals should sample patients from medical and med-surg units to reduce the number of sampled
patients with zero (0) Gold Standard Medications. However, hospitals may expand their sampling to
patients in additional units of the hospitals.
d) Hospitals should sample patients from different days of the week, including patients admitted on the
weekend.
e) On the day of data collection, obtain a list of patients that were admitted the day before to medical
and/or med-surg units, in the order that they were admitted.
f) Follow the instructions in the Medication Reconciliation Workbook to randomly sample admitted
patients.
g) Send the list of sampled patients to the pharmacist, pharmacy resident, or pharmacy technician so
they can schedule an in-person, video, or phone interview with each patient to obtain their Gold
Standard Medication History.
Step 2: Interview Patients and Obtain the Gold Standard Medication History (Pharmacist or
Certified Pharmacy Technician
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)
a. A trained pharmacist, pharmacy resident, or certified pharmacy technician
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must interview the
patients from Step 1 and obtain the Gold Standard Medication History within 24 hours after
admission, typically the morning after admission. Note that this is in addition to, and separate from,
any pre-admission medication list that was created as part of normal care.
b. The pharmacist, pharmacy resident, or certified pharmacy technician
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can customize the following
script to explain to the patient the reason for the interview: “Hi, I’m (pharmacist’s name), a pharmacist
at (name of hospital). I know (care team member who may have collected a pre-admission
medication list or PAML) already asked you about the medications you were taking before you were
admitted to the hospital. I’m here to ask you about these medications again. Our hospital has asked
me to collect this information again so I can use it to measure how well we are doing in gathering
medication histories. What we learn will help us improve our processes of care in the future and make
sure we manage patients’ medications safely when they come into and after they leave the hospital.”
c. The Gold Standard Medication History is the list of medications that the patient was taking prior to
admission. Best practices for collecting the Gold Standard Medication History can be found in the
“Other Supporting Materials” for Section 2 on the Survey and CPOE Materials webpage
.
i. Pharmacists, pharmacy residents, and certified pharmacy technicians
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should try to use two
sources of information (see MARQUIS 2 Best Possible Medication History: Quick Tips and
Medication Reconciliation Implementation Toolkit for examples) and explore any
discrepancies (e.g., errors related to dose, route, timing, etc.) before finalizing the Gold
Standard Medication History. Once the pharmacist, pharmacy resident, or certified pharmacy
technician
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has completed the patient interview, they can utilize support from non-certified
pharmacy technicians, medical assistants, or nurses to investigate second or third
information sources (e.g., EHR list, pharmacy list, primary or specialty provider information,
etc.). However, the pharmacist, pharmacy resident, or
certified pharmacy technician
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must
be the one to obtain and finalize the Gold Standard Medication History.
ii. Medications that a patient is completely non-adherent to, meaning the patient has not taken
the medication for at least 30 days, should be excluded from the Gold Standard Medication
History.
iii. If a patient has been taking a medication differently to how it was prescribed, then the Gold
Standard Medication History should list the medication as the patient was taking it.
iv. Exclude PRN medications unless they are clinically relevant. This includes topical locations
and creams, saline nasal spray and artificial tear eye drops, herbals and supplements, and
vitamins. Two examples of clinically relevant medications that should not be excluded from