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?

Does anyone currently have a Hospital at Home program? If so can you share how you handle patient own medication orders (labeling, checking integrity, etc.).

Our hospital has had quite a few occurrences due to known, or suspected, self-administration of patients meds at bedside. Aside from going through everyone’s belongings, we are looking for some type of procedure/policy to help prevent this from happening. What types of procedures are hospitals following to discourage and prevent patients from taking their own medications (without the RN or provider being aware of this administration) from home while they are inpatient? Thanks!