Information on drugs brought to hospital by inpatients is essential to the risk management of the treatment they receive after admission. In this regard, we investigated the effectiveness of a system under which a pharmacist checks the details of any drugs brought by inpatients on admission. A counter for this purpose was established in front of the inpatient reception desk and pharmacists were assigned to it to check any drugs brought by patients, the number of pharmacists depending on the time of admission and number of patients. The assignment of several pharmacists for 2-hour periods enabled us to check the drugs brought in by about 80% of the total number of inpatients. Information on drugs brought to hospital by patients was immediately input to the patients' medical database using a scanner to make it available for the use of physicians.