Scope of this summary
Adults and children moving through hospital admission, transfer, discharge or an outpatient encounter where a medication list must be verified and reconciled. AHRQ MATCH is an older process-improvement toolkit last reviewed in 2022, not a current national drug-selection, monitoring or deprescribing guideline. Product selection, tapering, pediatric dosing, pregnancy, controlled substances and institutional high-alert-medicine protocols are outside this summary and require their own current sources.
sources for this section:AHRQ MATCH
The Bottom Line
- Build the best possible medication history from what the patient actually takes, including prescription medicines, over-the-counter products, vitamins, herbals, eye drops, creams, inhalers and intermittent or borrowed products.
- Reconcile that history against admission, transfer, discharge and outpatient plans, explain every intentional difference and assign ownership for resolving discrepancies rather than copying an unverified list forward.
- Separate an intentional treatment change from an unintended discrepancy: compare the verified pre-encounter list with admission, transfer or discharge orders and treatment plans, then have the responsible prescriber resolve unexplained differences.
- Give the patient or caregiver one updated list at the end of the encounter and explain how to maintain and share it; AHRQ MATCH emphasizes standardized documentation, defined staff roles and accessibility of the reconciled list to the care team.
sources for this section:AHRQ MATCH
Practical clinical workflow
1
Invite the patient or caregiver to bring containers and records, compare patient report, pharmacy fill history and prior documentation and record product, strength, route, frequency, indication and actual use.
2
Identify omissions, duplications, dose or frequency differences, allergy confusion, interactions and medicines continued without an indication; contact the prescriber or pharmacist to resolve clinically important uncertainty.
3
Classify every difference as intended, unresolved or apparently unintended, document the reason for an intentional change and send clinically important uncertainty to the responsible prescriber rather than silently editing the list.
4
Provide one updated plain-language list, explain the changes and the importance of managing medication information, communicate the reconciled list to the next care setting and verify that unresolved discrepancies have a named owner.
sources for this section:AHRQ MATCH
Safety boundaries and escalation
- Do not restart, stop or change a medicine merely to make two lists match; the responsible clinician must determine whether the difference is intentional and clinically appropriate.
- Treat a serious suspected adverse reaction, overdose or medication-error injury before reporting it. FDA MedWatch accepts serious-problem reports for many human medical products, but vaccines, tobacco products and some other product groups use different federal portals.
- Escalate an unresolved discrepancy when delay could cause harm, particularly an omitted time-critical medicine, duplicate therapy, major dose difference or a product to which the patient reports a serious reaction.
- A reconciled list records the intended regimen but does not prove that every medicine is indicated, correctly dosed or safe for the individual; condition-specific review remains necessary outside this bounded MATCH process.
Localization
AHRQ MATCH supplies a US medication-reconciliation process framework but does not establish a federal formulary, deprescribing sequence or monitoring standard. FDA MedWatch is the federal safety-reporting route for relevant medical products, while its page directs vaccines, tobacco and some other categories to separate systems. State scope-of-practice law and institutional protocols define who may reconcile and change orders.
sources for this section:AHRQ MATCH
Source documents
Use the linked source documents for complete recommendations, evidence grading, exclusions and implementation detail.
- Agency for Healthcare Research and QualityMedications at Transitions and Clinical Handoffs (MATCH) Toolkit for Medication ReconciliationToolkit created 2012; content last reviewed July 2022 路 published 2012-08-01 路 updated 2022-07-01 路 accessed 2026-08-20view source
- U.S. Food and Drug AdministrationMedWatch: The FDA Safety Information and Adverse Event Reporting Programaccessed 2026-08-20view source
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