Media Alert: ForHealth Technologies Chief Pharmacy Officer Calls for Hospital Pharmacies to Rethink Use of Technology to Improve Safety in IV Dose Preparation
Relying Only on Paper Labels and Human Diligence in Pharmacy IV Rooms Is Insufficient; Identifies Technologies That Can and Cannot Reduce Medication Errors in Hospital IV Rooms
DAYTONA BEACH, FL--(Marketwire - July 15, 2008) -
WHO:
Dennis Tribble, Pharm.D. Chief Pharmacy Officer for ForHealth Technologies and Chairman of
the American Society of Health-Systems Pharmacists (ASHP) Section on
Pharmacy Informatics and Technology. Tribble has more than 30 years of
professional experience working in hospital pharmacies and has published
extensively on hospital pharmacy operations and hospital pharmacy
automation.
WHAT:
Tribble is calling on the hospital pharmacy community to increase its
awareness of the technologies that exist today that can greatly reduce the
potential for errors in hospital pharmacies.
Dr. Tribble comments: "Hospital IV
rooms have been largely ignored when it comes to advancements in
technology to improve patient safety. Pharmacists and IV room technicians
deserve better technology for error prevention than paper labels and manual
calculators. Incrementally adding more manual checking steps that rely
solely on human diligence is not a viable answer."
WHERE:
IV room errors made in preparing intravenous medication doses are among the
most difficult to detect and potentially the most hazardous to patients.
Intravenous doses are commonly given to the most acutely ill patients and
often include the most potent of drugs.
"IV doses are generally mixtures of clear liquids -- once mixed, visual
inspection of doses simply cannot uncover errors. Human diligence is simply
insufficient," Tribble said. "In the course of their daily work, hospital
pharmacists inspect hundreds, sometimes thousands, of IV preparations --
the vast majority of which are correctly prepared. Finding the rare error
amongst hundreds of correct doses stresses human capability. "
HOW:
What CANNOT fix the IV error problem?
-- Adding more inspections by pharmacists and technicians does not promise
a resolution. All human beings make errors at times. Adding more people
performing more inspections may reduce error rates to some extent - but
there can be little doubt that uncaught errors will continue to occur as
long as human diligence alone is used.
-- Modifications to container labeling - color coding, bigger type, etc. -
is not the answer. The number of possible colors, special lettering
approaches, etc. pales in comparison to the number of discriminations
amongst labels a pharmacist must make. In the end, hospitals will still be
relying on human diligence.
-- New patient safety-centered technologies that do not impact IV room
processes simply cannot impact IV room error rates. Examples:
-- Bar Code Medication Administration (BCMA, BPOC) systems use
barcode-scanning to reduce dose administration errors at the patient
bedside (i.e. administering one patient's dose to another.) However,
BCMA systems are downstream of IV room processes and can't detect or
prevent errors made in IV dose compounding.
-- Computerized Physician's Order Entry (CPOE) systems -- aimed at
making sure physicians' orders are properly entered and
communicated -- are upstream of IV room processes and can't detect
or prevent errors made in IV dose compounding.
What CAN help fix the IV error problem?
-- Carefully redesigned and automated workflows with in-process checks and
controls that assure each dose reaching the patient is known to be
correctly compounded. Automation systems are untiring and single-minded in
their implementation of quality assurance.
-- As a part of this process re-design, bar code scanning can and should be
utilized in the IV room to reduce "wrong drug" errors.
-- ForHealth Technologies has specifically designed dose preparation
devices and bar code-based work flow automation products to reduce
medication errors in hospital pharmacy IV rooms and provide pharmacists
with desperately needed technology advancements.
Hospital IV room workflow technology from ForHealth can:
-- Automate in-process verifications to ensure that correct products
are selected by the pharmacist or technician;
-- Automatically perform dose calculations (versus the manual
calculators used in most hospital IV rooms today) and provide
confirmation "are you sure?" safeguards at every stage;
-- Digitally photograph every step in the process to permit both
prospective and retrospective control of critical steps in the
IV room process.
In addition, ForHealth's high-speed robotic doses preparation systems
prepare doses with consistent, repeatable accuracy that cannot be
attained by human beings. ForHealth's systems have prepared more
than 22 million doses.
WHEN:
The technology to automate the hospital IV room and successfully reduce
human error for as little as 25 cents a dose, is available today.
Contact Information: Media Contact:
Dawn Sullivan
Katie Delach
Hart-Boillot
781-893-0053
ForHealth Technologies Contact:
Dennis Schneider
ForHealth Technologies
603-233-5644