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[A multicenter study on the quality of use of long-term medication card]
A Corbella1, M Baré, J Bigordà
1Institut d'Estudis de la Salut, Barcelona.
Insights
Improving Long-term Medication Cards (LMC) use in primary care through education significantly enhanced medication record accuracy and adherence to treatment guidelines. This quality improvement initiative demonstrated the value of ongoing training and feedback loops.
Area of Science:
- Healthcare Quality Improvement
- Primary Care Medicine
- Medication Management
Background:
- The effective management of long-term medications is crucial in primary care settings.
- Long-term Medication Cards (LMC) are tools used to track patient prescriptions.
- Optimizing the use of LMC is essential for ensuring medication safety and adherence.
Purpose of the Study:
- To evaluate and enhance the utilization of Long-term Medication Cards (LMC) across three primary care centers.
- To assess the impact of continuous education on quality assurance methodologies for LMC management.
Main Methods:
- A before-and-after study design was employed.
- Data were collected from 462 LMC in the initial evaluation and 333 in the second.
- Interventions included professional feedback, system modifications for LMC control, and updated renewal/cancellation norms.
Main Results:
- Significant improvements were observed in multiple LMC data points, including recording treatment duration (63% to 98%) and guideline adherence (61% to 87%).
- The non-inclusion of short-term (under 3 months) and long-term (over 1 year) authorizations improved substantially (58% to 100% and 83% to 100%, respectively).
- Non-inclusion of antibiotic treatments on LMC also showed marked improvement (94% to 100%).
Conclusions:
- Ongoing training and feedback are feasible and beneficial for improving LMC use in primary care.
- The quality guarantee cycle can be effectively applied to implement and sustain internal quality improvement activities.
- This study highlights the positive impact of structured interventions on medication management quality.
Objective:
To evaluate and improve the use of Long-term Medication Cards (LMC) at three Primary Care Centres and to obtain information about the impact of ongoing education on quality guarantee methodology.
Design:
A before and after study.
Setting:
The Caldes de Montbui, Rubi-1 and Concordia (Sabadell) Primary Care Centres.
Participants:
LMC samples from these three centres: 462 and 333 LMC for the first and second evaluations, respectively.
Interventions:
The professionals involved were fed back the results of the evaluations carried out. Modifications in the system of control and organisation of the LMC were introduced. These included keeping the information contained on the LMC in the centres and changes in their cancellation and renewal norms.
Measurements And Main Results:
The results showed intracenter increases on all except one of fifteen measurements, presenting the following extreme values in the two evaluations performed at the three centres: record on the LMC of the length of treatment (from 63 to 98%); non-inclusion of treatments with authorization of less than three months (58 to 100%); non-inclusion of authorization above a year (83 to 100%); recording of the guidelines (61 to 87%); non-inclusion of antibiotic treatments on the LMC (94 to 100%).
Conclusions:
As for training, experience showed that its is feasible and profitable to follow up ongoing training, both to evaluate the impact of this training and to use the application of the quality guarantee cycle in the introduction and setting-up of internal QEI activities.