Ontario Health’s Medication Safety Quality Standard addresses care for people of all ages who are taking one or more medications. It focuses on care in all settings relevant to medication safety, including primary health care, specialist health care, hospital care, long-term care, and home and community care.
The quality standard includes five quality statements that address areas as having high potential to improve medication safety in Ontario, for people of all ages in all settings.
Below is a sample of tools that may help you with the implementation of the quality statements in practice, organized according to purpose. Many of these tools will help to support multiple quality statements.
This list is not exhaustive. Are there other tools or resources you use? Do you have experience implementing these tools? If so, please use the comments section below to share!
Tools to Support Clinical Practice
Digital Health Solutions
- PrescribeIT—a national, not-for-profit e-prescribing service funded by Health Canada. The service allows prescriber to send, renew, and cancel prescriptions using their existing electronic medical record (EMR), while improving clinical communications with pharmacies. To learn more, an application of interest can be submitted
- Ontario Digital Health Drug Repository (DHDR)—an electronic repository of dispensed drug and pharmacy service information that will expand on what has been available to date in the drug profile viewer. The DHDR currently includes records relating to publicly funded drugs, monitored drugs, and pharmacy services representing approximately 70% of all dispensed medications in Ontario
Patient Safety Incidents
The following tools and/or resources can support Quality Statement 5: Medication-Related Patient Safety Incidents in the quality standard:
- Canadian Medication Incident Reporting and Prevention System (CMIRPS)—this information system has been established to collect data on medication incidents, facilitate the implementation of reporting of medication incidents, and facilitate the development and dissemination of timely, targeted information designed to reduce the risk of medication incidents. This system is developed and implemented by Health Canada, ISMP Canada, Canadian Institute for Health Information (CIHI), and with recent support from the CPSI
- Medication Error Reporting—an online program from ISMP Canada where medication errors can be reported by patients and families
- Health Canada MedEffect Canada—an online program from the government of Canada where medication reactions can be reported
- The Canadian Incident Analysis Framework—a resource to support those who analyze patient safety incidents in any health care setting and to identify ways to implement system improvements and prevent similar incidents
Educational Opportunities for Health Care Professionals
Tools and Resources for Patients, Families, and Caregivers
- One Simple Solution for Medication Safety—a video by DocMikeEvans that helps you learn about keeping a list of your medications
- Five Questions to Ask about your Medications—developed in collaboration by ISMP Canada, CPSI, Patients for Patient Safety Canada, the Canadian Pharmacists Association, and the Canadian Society for Hospital Pharmacists to help patients and their caregivers have a conversation about medications with their health care provider
- A kids’ version is also available: Kids: 5 Questions to Ask About My Medicines
- CoHealth App—a digital app that allows patients to keep track of self-management related tasks that have been recommended by their health care providers, as well as the management of their medications
- Patient Decision Aids—an alphabetical listing of patient decision aids by health topic from the Ottawa Hospital Research Institute. Decision aids are tools that help people become involved in decision making, providing information about the options and outcomes, and by clarifying personal values. Several decision aids are available to support decisions related to initiating, switching or stopping certain medications.
- SafeMedicationUse.ca—ISMP Canada's consumer-focused website where consumers can get information and resources about using medication safely and report medication errors and/or reactions to medications
- Knowledge is the Best Medicine—tools to help you keep track of your medications (such as a fillable medication record, MyMedRec app)
- MyMedRec App—a digital app developed by ISMP Canada that allows patients to keep track of their own personal health information, including a list of medications
Other Resources
- Quality Standards—The Medication Safety quality standard is intended to complement other Ontario Health quality standards with medication-related content such as:
Comment below to describe your experience with these tools or share any others you have found useful!