How to Audit Resident MARs

Auditing medications for residents can mean two different things: auditing all medication order details, or auditing the completion of administration records. This guide describes ways to audit both.

Auditing All Medications

It is a good practice to regularly audit all of your resident's medications, taking a close look at important details to catch errors. 

Medication List Report

Use this report to see a list of each routine and PRN medication and treatment on your residents' profiles. There are many filters on this report that can help you narrow down a list of residents or types of medications if needed.

Export this report to Excel to see many more columns than can fit on the report page in ALIS. If you can use Excel to audit the medications, Excel will help you focus on specific columns of details. Here are some suggested columns to isolate and review:

• End dates: Verify that any end dates are set to exactly when you expect! Orders discontinue automatically on their end dates.
• Times/Dosage: Verify accuracy of times and dosage and look out for any less-than-ideal units. If you see "TBEC" instead of "TABS", it may be worthwhile to update this to the more obvious unit for your med techs.
• Scheduling Status: See if any orders are Disabled, and verify if this is correct. Disabled orders will not show on the Pass Meds page.
• Narcotic and Medication Tags: Verify that all the right tags are associated with the right orders.
• For PRNs, look at the Min. Admin. Interval, Max. Admin. in 24 Hours, and Check and Record columns. Using these will make PRN administration safer and more careful.

Physician Orders

If you work for a smaller building, do not have access to Excel, or want to audit the orders printed on paper, you may prefer to generate the Physician Orders documents in bulk for all residents (or a group of residents).

To learn how to generate the POs for multiple residents, read this article: How do I view and print Physician’s Orders for all residents?

You may also find it easiest to navigate the details of your resident orders on their Manage Orders page, so you have easy access to make updates to orders if needed. Use the resident menu at the top right to navigate to each resident you are auditing.

Auditing Administration Records

• The ideal practice is for your team to work together to audit the Pass Meds page each shift to make sure all scheduled orders have been documented.
• If you have a shift lead, they can verify that all orders on the previous shifts displaying on Pass Meds have been documented, and that orders during their shift are all documented by the appropriate scheduled time.

Pass Meds

The first place you should look to audit administration records is on the Pass Meds page, because here you can see the details of the current shift and the last two shifts. If there are any unrecorded items, it is easiest to catch them now and update them while they still display on Pass Meds.

For more information about what displays on Pass Meds, read this article: Navigating the Pass Meds Page

Pass Med Report

This report is very useful for generating a list of all unrecorded records within a specified range of time.

Update the Variance filter to 'Not Passed' to see anything unrecorded (this will not include recorded Exceptions) and update the Scheduled Date range filter to any amount of days in the past. It is not recommended to include the current day, because it will show you scheduled medications for later today.

You can also review resident MAR documents themselves, and print them out if you prefer to do so. Read this article to learn how to generate MARs for multiple residents in one file: How do I view and print MARs for all or multiple residents?

Related Articles:

Navigating the Pass Meds Page

Editing Medications, PRNs, and Treatments

How do I access past MARs for a resident?