A Prescription for Patient Safety
The eMAR system protects patients from errors, ensuring the right patient receives the right medication of the right dose at the right time via the right route.
The BWH Pharmacy’s drug repackaging center ensures that every medication receives a barcode, which includes information such as the drug expiration date. “That’s important because some of our less used medications could sit in the Omni Cell automated dispensing cabinets past their expiration date,” Tom Cooley, RPh, MBA, assistant director of the Pharmacy, said. “If a nurse attempts to administer one of these medications, the barcode will alert him or her that the medication is expired and should not be administered.”
The use of bar code technology throughout the medication dispensing and administration systems and the new pharmacy and eMAR system together protect patients from medication errors that could potentially occur in the 6.2 million medication doses administered at BWH each year.
As a result of using bar code scanning in the Pharmacy during the drug dispensing process, targeted pharmacy dispensing errors have been reduced by 85 percent and potential adverse events by about 63 percent.