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The medication reconciliation process begins by identifying which medicines a patient used before presentation to hospital. This is time‐consuming, labour intensive and may involve interruption of clinicians. We sought to identify the availability and accuracy of data held in a national dispensing database, relative to other sources of medication history information.

For patients admitted to two acute hospitals in Ireland, a Gold Standard Pre‐Admission Medication List (GSPAML) was identified and corroborated with the patient or carer. The GSPAML was compared for accuracy and availability to PAMLs from other sources, including the Health Service Executive Primary Care Reimbursement Scheme (HSE‐PCRS) dispensing database.

Some 1111 medication were assessed for 97 patients, who were median age 74 years (range 18–92 years), median four co …