Evaluating the quality, feasibility and patient satisfaction of medication history taking by telephone for patients with scheduled admissions: a pilot study

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INTRODUCTION: Medication history taking at hospital admission is still prone to errors. Despite numerous quality improvement initiatives, new strategies to improve medication history taking are still sought and evaluated. Unfortunately, the gold standard research methodology for evaluation is resource-intensive, as it requires each patient to complete two medication history interviews. Therefore, a new study design and quality parameter were developed. AIM: We aimed to pilot our newly developed study design and quality parameter in a study on medication history taking by telephone. METHOD: In this prospective interventional study, patients with scheduled admissions had their medication histories taken either by telephone before admission (intervention) by a pharmacist or in-person by physicians or medical interns upon admission (control). Following the newly developed design, we compared a patients' new medication histories to the respective pre-visit medication lists available in the medical records to calculate the new endpoint: the difference in the number of updates per patient. Further, we surveyed patients and staff on their satisfaction. RESULTS: We enrolled 76 intervention and 75 control patients. In the intervention group, a mean of 4.93 (± 4.45, 0-18) updates were found vs. 3.40 (± 3.75, 0-21) in the control group. Accordingly, the incident rate of number of updates per patient was 1.34 times higher in the intervention group (p = 0.044). The distribution of the types of updates was similar with the most common type of update being newly initiated medicines in both groups. Medication history taking by telephone took 15.7 ± 9.8 min (mean ± SD), including preparation, interview, and documentation. Survey results showed that intervention patients felt positive about the telephone interviews. Both groups were open to other digital approaches, e.g., online platforms. CONCLUSION: The new study design proved feasible to evaluate medication history taking by telephone with comprehensible results. The telephone approach delivered more updates compared to standard care, however, the proposed endpoint needs to be validated against the gold standard before widespread application Patient acceptance for this and other digital approaches was high in both groups.

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