Study protocol for the evaluation of pharmacist-participated medication reconciliation at county hospitals in China: a multicentre, open-label, assessor-blinded, non-randomised, controlled study.

Abstract

Pharmacist-participated medication reconciliation proved an effective strategy to decrease the risk of medication discrepancy-related errors. However, it is still under pilot in China and its effectiveness in the Chinese healthcare system remains unclear. This study aims to conduct a pharmacist-participated medication reconciliation intervention for elderly patients in county hospitals in China and to evaluate its effect. This is a multicentre, prospective, open-label, assessor-blinded, cluster, non-randomised, controlled study for elderly patients. The study will be conducted in seven county hospitals, and the clusters will be hospital wards. In each hospital, two internal medicine wards will be randomly allocated into either intervention group or control group. Patients in the intervention group will receive pharmacist-participated medication reconciliation, and those in the control group will receive standard care. The primary outcome is the incidence of medication discrepancy, and the secondary outcomes are patients' medication adherence, healthcare utilisation and medical costs within 30 days after discharge. Ethics committee approval of this study was obtained from Peking University Institution Review Board (IRB00001052-21016). We have also obtained ethical approvals from all the participating centres. The findings will be published in scientific and conference presentations. ChiCTR2100045668.