• E-mail
• Print
• RSS

How to make the business case for bar coding

Pharmacy Regulation Resource, July 27, 2005

Just two errors resulting in court cases could cost a hospital $1.2 million.

A bar-code system could cost as much as $1 million, depending on the hospital's size and existing infrastructure, but presenting hospital leaders and trustees with a cost savings in terms of error reductions could help make a case for the technology, said John Tourville, pharmacy director at Children's Medical Center in Dallas.

For example, Tourville estimated that his hospital has saved between $450,000 and $1 million by reducing errors. Each error costs between $2,000 and $4,000, and the average legal claim is $6,000, although pediatric cases can jump into the millions, he said.

The error rate at Children's dropped from 280 errors per 1 million doses in 1997 to 80 errors per 1 million doses in 2002. That rate may have fallen even more in the past couple of years, Tourville said.

Before going to the board of directors with his plan, Tourville said he and his team needed to envision what the final product would look like.

"What we envisioned was a system that was streamlined, but we also wanted it so that everyone knew what was going on," Tourville said.

The pharmacy-nursing team then evaluated workflow and various medication-administration processes to see how bar coding would impact them, he said. The plan was then adjusted accordingly.

• E-mail to a Colleague
• Print
• RSS
• Archive