Destruction of Patient Home Medications Stored in Pharmacy

PLEASE NOTE:   Posts made to this forum should not be considered as the expressed opinions of, nor should be considered endorsed by, the Medication Safety Officer’s Society (MSOS) or the Institute for Safe Medication Practices (ISMP). 

Make sure your email is up-to-date
In order to continue to receive updates from MSOS, as well as forum posts and other valuable information as a member of MSOS, please be sure to update your email address with us, whenever it changes. If you need assistance doing so, please send an email to jgold@ismp.org

4 posts / 0 new
Last post
Trecia Swanston
Trecia Swanston's picture
Offline
Last seen: 1 week 19 hours ago
Joined: 03/26/2018 - 11:11
Destruction of Patient Home Medications Stored in Pharmacy

We are revising our patient home med policy and wanted to see what others were doing in regards to destruction of patient home meds. Please let me know which process you follow and I will summarize for the group.

Process #1
• Do you destroy the meds a certain number of days after admission (e.g. 30 days) regardless of if the patient is still in the hospital?
• If this is your process how do you ensure the meds do not get destroyed for those patients that are still in house after the cutoff date?
• What challenges have you had with this process?

Process #2
• Do you destroy a certain number of days after the patient has been discharged?
• If this is your process do you have reach out to the patient to give them an opportunity to pick up the med?
• Do you call the provider to see if those meds should be destroyed?
• What challenges have you had with this process?

Thanks in advance.

Tags: