Improving bedside dispensing services through early medication discharge planning: a pre-post intervention study.

Background: Delays in producing discharge prescriptions have hindered the provision of bedside dispensing services (BEDISC) that enable medication reconciliation and pharmaceutical intervention, which is an important element in transitional care medication safety. We aimed to assess the impact of early medication discharge planning on the delivery of BEDISC in terms of the rate of bedside dispensing, medication errors, and cost-saving from medication reconciliation by reusing patient's own medicines (POMs).

Methods: A pre-post intervention study was conducted at medical wards in a public tertiary hospital.