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Hospitals using expensive technology to reduce
Issue date: 9/13/01 Section: World/Nation
That has eliminated all errors because of illegibility, said Dr. Simon Simaha, a practicing physician who is vice president for information technology.
Bar-coding systems use handheld scanners — waved over bar codes on the nurse’s ID badge, patient’s wristband and medication packet — to link information from each with a computer database. That can catch everything from worrisome side effects and look-alike drug names to lab tests indicating the dosage should be changed.
Veterans Affairs medical centers across the country have implemented them. The VA hospitals in East Orange and Lyons, N.J., upgraded theirs with automated, continuous backup of all information onto personal computers, so if the computer system crashes, the medical staff has current information.
Robotic systems in pharmacies use conveyor belts, bar-coded stock in special cabinets and sophisticated software to pull medication doses based on orders a doctor or pharmacist entered into a computer. The robots sort drugs into bins for each patient before they are checked by a human pharmacist.
Besides reducing human errors, the systems give pharmacists more time to advise doctors on medication choices.
After the 1999 Institute of Medicine report on hospital errors, a number of organizations demanded action by the hospitals. In addition to the loss of life, the mistakes added an estimated $2 billion to the nation’s health care bill, the institute report said. A new study this year challenged the institute’s numbers.
Since the 1999 report, the American Hospital Association has sent all 5,000 U.S. acute care hospitals a lengthy questionnaire that helps administrators spot every procedure that could lead to an error and determine the best way to change it.
In addition, AHA has sent every hospital a video produced by safety software maker Bridge Medical Inc. called ‘‘Beyond Blame.’’ In it, fired hospital workers discuss how devastated they felt after making medication mistakes that killed patients. Experts then discuss the need to move past the blame to fix the systems that allowed errors to occur.
Bar-coding systems use handheld scanners — waved over bar codes on the nurse’s ID badge, patient’s wristband and medication packet — to link information from each with a computer database. That can catch everything from worrisome side effects and look-alike drug names to lab tests indicating the dosage should be changed.
Veterans Affairs medical centers across the country have implemented them. The VA hospitals in East Orange and Lyons, N.J., upgraded theirs with automated, continuous backup of all information onto personal computers, so if the computer system crashes, the medical staff has current information.
Robotic systems in pharmacies use conveyor belts, bar-coded stock in special cabinets and sophisticated software to pull medication doses based on orders a doctor or pharmacist entered into a computer. The robots sort drugs into bins for each patient before they are checked by a human pharmacist.
Besides reducing human errors, the systems give pharmacists more time to advise doctors on medication choices.
After the 1999 Institute of Medicine report on hospital errors, a number of organizations demanded action by the hospitals. In addition to the loss of life, the mistakes added an estimated $2 billion to the nation’s health care bill, the institute report said. A new study this year challenged the institute’s numbers.
Since the 1999 report, the American Hospital Association has sent all 5,000 U.S. acute care hospitals a lengthy questionnaire that helps administrators spot every procedure that could lead to an error and determine the best way to change it.
In addition, AHA has sent every hospital a video produced by safety software maker Bridge Medical Inc. called ‘‘Beyond Blame.’’ In it, fired hospital workers discuss how devastated they felt after making medication mistakes that killed patients. Experts then discuss the need to move past the blame to fix the systems that allowed errors to occur.
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