Pharmacy
Pharmacy Department Helps Drive Patient Safety Thru Medication Management at Ashe Memorial Hospital.
Safe medication management is a team effort, requiring close collaboration between physicians, pharmacists, and nurses alike. As such, having an integrated solution for delivering shared and timely patient information to all care providers involved in a patient's treatment is integral to providing safe and quality patient care. With this in mind we used a closed loop medication management system featuring comprehensive tool sets for all those involved in medication delivery, whether ordering, verifying, dispensing, or administering medications.
Chad Riggs, Pharm.D. is our clinical pharmacist and is equipped with real-time clinical decision support, providing a critical safeguard against potential adverse drive events. Drug and allergies, interactions, IV incompatibilities, contraindications, duplicate therapies, and potential conflicts involving a patient's lab result, diet, and disease are flagged by our system. Also,the Pharmacists perform drug dosage calculations, and we are linked to on-line evidence-based medicine resources.
Barcodes and Wristband Technology Help Reduce Wrong Medication and Dosage to Wrong Patients.
Sharlene Lambert is the Information Pharmacy Specialist Certified Technician. Patients admitted to Ashe Memorial Hospital should take a closer look at the bracelet wrapped around their wrist. You will notice they have changed. No longer just pieces of plastic with a barely legible name on them, bracelets now have an electronic bar code that could prevent a life threatening drug reaction. There are only 10% of hospitals in the nation and less then 3% in the state that use a barcode and scanning system to prevent common medication errors and patient mix ups. Ashe Memorial Hospital is really in the forefront in modern technology. Bedside medication verification has eliminated many medication occurrences for more than 240,000 medication doses dispensed by Ashe Memorial Hospital Pharmacy each year. This is just a great tool that we use here at Ashe Memorial Hospital that doesn't replace clinical judgement on the part of the Pharmacist and Nursing, but it will prevent giving the wrong pill, wrong dosage and wrong time to the wrong patient.
Bar Coding Medications
Four years ago, the Food and Drug Administration required drug makers to place bar codes on bottles and packages. This was the first step towards mechanizing drug administration in hospitals. We have an outstanding Pharmacy Technician team here at Ashe Memorial Hospital. Even after the FDA required drug makers to provide all medications with bar codes, many medications have wrap around or such a small bar code that our scanners are unable to read them. So approximately 60% or 180,000 doses annually have to be re-packaged or re-barcoded. Again we have a hard working and very dedicated Pharmacy Technician Staff. Our Pharmacy Staff also mix all IV fluids that are ordered. When an IV medication is ordered the Pharmacy then mixes it with the appropriate IV fluid. We adhere to all Chapters (797), which is the oversight of IV admixtures rules and regulations.
Implementation of Bar Code Scanning at the Patient Bed Side
All 172 veteran hospitals across the country have installed the necessary equipment for bar code scanning. However, 90% of other medical centers and hospitals lag behind. Area administrators and CEO's say that it partly has to do with cost and partly to do with paperwork. Here at Ashe Memorial Hospital we spent most of the year in 2005 updating our computer systems just to allow the implementation of the bar code system. The hardware and software for the bar code scanning system, not including training time, cost more than $870,000.00. We began the implementation of the first phase of bed-side coding in December 2005 with our Omnicell, which is our auto dispensing machine (ADM) for our medications. This was the first patient safety net that was installed. The nurse will not be able to obtain medication out of the machine until the pharmacy has entered the correct medication and correct dosage. Otherwise, the nurse must have another nurse to verify the order and dose before removing it from the ADM. Ashe Memorial Hospital's first nursing units went live on July 5, 2006. All nursing units were completed by December 31, 2006. Safe medication management and patient safety goals are a team effort. The core members of our team here at Ashe Memorial Hospital are:
William Baldwin, IT Manager
Sara Houser, RN, CNO
Sharlene Lambert, LPN, CPh IST
Diana McClure, RN, IN
Joe Thore, COO
David McCune, Radiology Manager
Billy Smith, R.Ph
Kina Jones, RN
David Barlow, RT
This project could not have been possible without every department in the hospital, which makes the Ashe Memorial Hospital Health Care Team. Ashe County is fortunate to have this great organization.
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