Sending a patient's medication orders to the nursing facility may seem straightforward. It may even give you a sense of reassurance that the challenges of polypharmacy,¹ medication timing, administration, and picking up medications from the pharmacy will no longer be the patient's responsibility, but instead will be handled by health care professionals. Unfortunately, just prescribing the medications to the facility doesn't guarantee the patient will receive them as ordered, on time, and as you intended.

When it comes to procuring and administering medications, nursing facilities (meaning both skilled and long-term care environments for the purposes of this article) have protocols and rules that may not be familiar to physicians who haven't worked in such settings. Here's what family physicians need to know.