A Medikationsanalyse is a structured review of everything a person actually takes. That covers the prescriptions written by every physician involved, the medicines bought over the counter, and the supplements that rarely get mentioned unless somebody asks.
The pharmacist works through the assembled list and looks for four things:
- Two substances on the list can interact with each other in the person's body.
- The same active ingredient can appear twice under two different brand names.
- A dose may no longer suit the person in front of the pharmacist, though it once suited them.
- What was prescribed and what is actually taken at home can differ, and the review measures that distance.
The defining feature is that this is one review of the medication as it stands on the day, and it produces two things, a documented report and a conversation with the person about what the review found.
Where something looks wrong, the finding is written down and sent to the prescriber. The decision to change, stop or replace a medicine belongs to the physician, and nothing in a Medikationsanalyse changes that boundary. What the pharmacy contributes is an ordered view of the whole medication, which is usually the view no single prescriber had. Repeating the review and following the person over time is a different undertaking, described under Medikationsmanagement.
Laboratory values sometimes belong among the inputs, because a value that describes renal function, or a value that is watched because a particular medicine requires monitoring, changes how a dose should be judged.
Where such a value is to hand, because the person brought a letter from the practice or a result from a service the pharmacy provided, it is one input the pharmacist can see and note in the report. It is not interpreted clinically at the counter, and the prescribing decision that follows it stays with the physician.
Operationally the review is a pharmazeutische Dienstleistung with defined conditions on who may deliver it, who qualifies for it and how it is recorded, and the record is what supports payment on a Sonderbeleg. The people who benefit most are the ones on Polymedikation, where the number of substances alone makes an overlap likely.
Two practical requirements decide whether the review works at all:
- The appointment has to be long enough to go through a full list without interruption.
- The space has to be private enough that the person will name everything they take.
This glossary entry is general information about German pharmacy law and practice. It is not legal advice. For binding guidance on your own pharmacy, contact your Landesapothekerkammer.
