Medication and medical mistakes contribute to 98,000 patients deaths each year in the United States. The Veterans Affairs Department is leading an effort to reduce that number with a wireless application designed to ensure that patients receive the correct medications.
VA not only has outpaced private hospitals in implementing health care IT systems, but the department is leapfrogging its private-sector counterparts in using mobile and wireless devices and applications directly in patient care.
The Barcode Medication Administration System, which is in all VA hospitals now, lets doctors and nurses verify the time, dose and name of a patient receiving a medication. It includes a scanner using the IEEE 802.11 WiFi wireless standard and mobile or wireless PCs—moved around on carts—or handheld devices.
VA hospitals give patients a bar coded wristband inscribed with patient information, and applies a bar code to every medication. A nurse scans the patient’s wristband for identity verification, and the system retrieves the medication record from VA’s Computerized Patient Record System and displays it on the PC or handheld screen.
The record verifies if it’s time for that patient to receive a specific number of milligrams of the prescribed drug. The nurse scans the drug to ensure the patient gets the right drug and the right dose at the right time.
“VA set the standard for managing medications in the inpatient space for any hospital environment, private or public, and we’re the first health care organization to have deployed it in an enterprise the size of the VA,” said Eric Raffin, deputy CIO of VA’s Sierra Pacific Network, or VISN 21, headquartered in Vallejo, Calif.
Better, not faster
Nurses no longer push a patient chart wagon from room to room, checking a paper chart when it was time for a patient’s medication and signing off when the patient took the medication. Now the process is more thorough and electronic—though that doesn’t make it faster, Raffin said.
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