While it’s good to see many hospitals moving to bedside medication verification, it’s still staggering to consider the full extent of medication errors that occur annually.  According to the Institute of Medicine, around 1.5 million medication errors occur every year, resulting in about 7,000 deaths.  It’s estimated that 70% of these errors are preventable.

Medication errors can occur at any stage of medication use (Ordering, Transcribing, Dispensing, Administering and Monitoring).

The goal to ensure patient safety and medication integrity include the 5 patient rights of medication delivery:

1.  The right medication
2.  The right patient
3.  The right time
4.  The right dosage
5.  The right route

Error at any stage of the administration of medicine may lead to serious consequences.

Keep in mind that The Joint Commission set National Patient Safety Goals to improve patient safety. “Improving the accuracy of patient identification, improving the safety of using medications, and accurately and completely reconciling medications across the continuum of care” topped the list of goals in 2008, 2009 and 2010.

These goals require:

1.  The use of at least two [patient] identifiers when providing care, treatment or services

2.  Communicating the complete and reconciled list of medications to the next provider of service and documenting the communication

3.  The use of two patient identifiers while administering medications and blood products or taking blood and other samples for clinical testing.

So, how does this all relate to mobility in healthcare? 

The FDA recommends a bar code solution to decrease the errors and risks of medication events.  Bar code and radio frequency identification (RFID) are two of the technologies that can be used for bedside medication verification and reduce errors that might occur during administration of medicine or blood products.  With the establishment of EHRs across healthcare, barcode medication verification at the point of care is a proven way to avoid costly medication errors and improve patient safety.

In our coming posts, we’ll discuss the manners in which you can optimize bedside medication verification, as well as key “lessons learned” during the integration process for our customers.