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Supermarket technology helps prevent medication errors

EHR Connection, November 12, 2007

Bar codes-like the ones on a box of cereal or a frozen pizza-can prevent medication errors, increase patient safety, and even prevent deaths, according to a November 2 article in The Green Bay Press-Gazette about Bellin Hospital, which recently spent $600,000 to implement the technology.

"From a nursing perspective, medical administration is a very complex process. We're often [giving medication] in a very distracting environment," says Cindy Suplinski, RN of Bellin Hospital in Green Bay, WI.

Patients now receive a bar-coded medical identification bracelet upon admission. When scanned, the bracelet links to their medical records. Medication also receives a bar code that's scanned before it's given to a patient, Suplinski says. "That way, if the doctor comes in and discontinues a medicine or changes it, the nurse will know right at the bedside," she says.

Michael Stiller, the hospital's pharmacy team leader, says most errors occur when medicine is administered at a cost of $2,500 to $4,000 per incident and two additional days per hospital stay. Citing an Institute of Medicine report from several years ago, Stiller notes that medication errors harm an estimated 1.5 million people annually and that approximately 7,000 of them die.

Click here to read The Green Bay Post-Gazette article.

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