Abstract
Outpatient medication reconciliation research, including patient and provider education interventions, has shown promise for reducing medication discrepancies in medical records.1–5 However, these studies are limited by varying methods of determining what medications individuals are taking—patient recall, pharmacy records, home visits, “updated” medication lists, “brown bag” review, phone interviews, or any combination thereof. Among studies that included “brown bag” requests, fewer than one-third of subjects brought medications to their appointments,2, 4 and one lacked a control group.6 Still, physicians and pharmacists recommend that patients “brown bag” their medications for office visits.5–7 The current study sought to determine whether physician-documented medication lists are more accurate among individuals who bring medications to outpatient appointments compared with those who do not.