Description The California Senate Bill 1254 from 2019 requires hospital pharmacy staff to obtain up ...

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Description The California Senate Bill 1254 from 2019 requires hospital pharmacy staff to obtain updated and accurate medication lists for high-risk patients upon admission in acute hospitals with more than 100 beds (Usheroff, 2023). High-risk patients include older adults, patients with chronic illnesses, or patients taking multiple drugs. Before this bill passed, nurses were the primary staff who obtained and updated these medication lists upon arrival to the hospital. With this new bill, pharmacy staff is also required to verify the medication lists for all high-risk patients admitted. A research study performed found that about 94% of medications obtained had at least one error, and about 54% of patients had at least one serious or potentially life-threatening error on their medication list (Tu et al., 2023). The technology associated with this bill includes the charting systems of the hospital and their medication administration records. Although technology has helped make obtaining past medical records easier for hospital staff, there are also occurrences where the wrong medical information was obtained and charted into patient records. This can cause a patient safety hazard as there can be wrong medical information regarding their medications updated in the patient's chart and if the patient is a poor historian, this can cause conflict and serious medication errors. To help prevent this from occurring, double verifying all information with the pharmacy, providers, and nursing staff during each hospital admission is important and can help reduce these risks.