The broad, long term objective of this project was to improve the safety of the drug use process by creating better communication linkages between community pharmacies, hospitals and outpatient physician offices. The project had five specific aims: (a) to bring together a planning group of consumers, community pharmacies and pharmacists, office-based clinicians, and hospital-based clinicians to identify the highest priority challenges and opportunities with regard to medication reconciliation; (b) to enroll at least one solo practitioner, one primary care group practice, one hospital and one community pharmacy in our medication reconciliation demonstration project; and (c) to implement locally-defined, boundary-spanning, best practices for reconciliation among these participants; and (d) to evaluate the success of the planning effort, and (e) to seek funding for a larger scale demonstration of the successful practices.

The Initiative was chaired by Dr. Bruce Lambert, of the Department of Pharmacy Administration, at the University of Illinois at Chicago.

This initiative was supported by a grant from: