Can a physician write "continue all medications" as a form of completely reconciling medications?
The Joint Commission standard MM.3.20 EP 9 states that the hospital specifies that blanket reinstatement of previous orders – a summary order to resume all previous orders – for medications are not acceptable.
Sentinel Event Alert Issue 35, January 25, 2006 states,
- "Accurate and complete medication reconciliation can prevent numerous prescribing and administration errors. Failure to reconcile medications may be compounded by the practice of writing "blanket" orders, such as "resume pre-op medications," which are highly error prone and are known to result in adverse drug events. Such orders are explicitly prohibited by the Joint Commission's Medication Management standards (MM.3.20)."
