🎞️ View video tutorial: Stopping medications

When you instruct a patient to stop taking a medication, you should always stop (discontinue) the prescription in the patient’s chart. This way, the patient’s active medications list accurately reflects what medications the patient is currently taking. Also, in keeping a patient’s active medications list accurate, you will not receive interaction warnings against medications the patient is no longer taking.

📌 Note: Once you sign a prescription, it can no longer be edited or deleted from the patient's chart. You can only Cancel or Stop the prescription. (For more information on cancelling a prescription entered in error, see Cancelling signed prescriptions.)

1. From the patient's chart, from the Start/Open menu or the Quick Menu, choose Medications. If you are viewing the chart summary, you can also click the arrow in the Active Medications widget.

2. Click Stop beside the medication you are discontinuing.

A Stop medication window appears.

3. In the Reason field, click Choose one... and select a reason from the list.
📌 Note: Both the Reason and Ended at fields are mandatory. If you do not complete these, a validation error appears. If you select Other (more info text is required) under Reason, it is mandatory to enter text in the More Information field.

4. The stop date defaults to today. Change the date, if necessary (for example, if the patient reports they stopped taking it prior to today).

5. Click Stop medication.

A confirmation window appears.

📌 Note: If you select the Stop & Create New Rx option, the medication appears crossed out in the Prescriptions section.

6. Click Stop.

The medication is moved from the Current list of medications to the All and Past list of medications. The discontinued medication is marked with a stop icon and Stopped banner. To see the additional details below it, click the arrow icon.

💡 Tip: You can also stop a medication while you are renewing a patient's medications. In the Manage Medications window, beside the medication’s dosage details, click the Stop icon.

📌 Note: If medications are stopped from an encounter, the stopped medications are shown in the Assessment and Plan section of the encounter by default. To change this, go to Settings > Prescription > My Encounter Prescriptions and clear the checkbox.

To see why a medication was discontinued, hover over the stopped medication and a tooltip appears with the provider who stopped it and reason for stopping it.