As posted by the Wall Street Journal:

Article

My comments:

Christus SPOHN Hospital Systems in Corpus Christi, TX recently released information concerning an overdose of 17 neonatal patients in their intensive care unit. The error was identified at the preparation step in the pharmacy, whereby the pharmacist or technician used the incorrect concentration of Heparin to mix intravenous doses. As a result, the patients received a much higher dose that necessary for clinical efficacy.

The article questions currently available technologies in healthcare and starts with Computerized Provider Order Entry (CPOE). Appropriately noted, CPOE does nothing to prevent a preparation error directly. However, tremendous value lies in reviewing hospital wide medication use practices when implementing a CPOE system. Standard concentrations of medications, an evaluation of currently used medications per unit, and order properties are among many important factors.

Bar Code Medication Administration (BCMA) is mentioned as a possible solution, but quickly realized to have little impact on a medication that was made incorrectly. Automation for the creation of IV solutions presents a potential fix as well. In the end, pharmacy informatics professionals know a system is only as good as the pharmacists that build it. Humans are required to check the medications being loaded into all automation, and as with these preparation errors are subject to potential error.

Healthcare consumers are looking for a black/white fix to these potentially harmful human interventions, but today none exist. In the end, as pharmacists it is our professional obligation to ensure medications are ordered, prepared, delivered, administered, and monitored as accurately as possible. This is a great article to reference when you feel rushed to get those medications up to the unit. Take your time and double check. It could save a life.

A research firm announced the results of a recent survey of the nation's top healthcare systems.

The top 10 list:

The Top Ten HIT List is as follows:

1. Electronic Health/Medical Records

2. Disaster Recovery/Business Continuity

3. Medical Archiving Systems

4. Storage Consolidation and Virtualization

5. Backup (disk-based and online storage)

6. Business Intelligence

7. Picture Archiving and Communication System

8. Infrastructure for Health Information Systems

9. Compliance

10. Securing Electronic Protected Health Information

Well, I have taken quite an extend hiatus from updating this site. We have had lots of things going on in the past year. At the office we are installing an enterprise EHR/CPOE/BCMA system. At home the kids are demanding more and more of our time. As such I am going to do my best to keep this site more up to date with information. I welcome any help from fellow Informaticists.

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This is my personal weblog. I do a lot of surfing and general research into emerging information technologies. Some of them are not related to Pharmacy at all. Anything I see that is interesting, I will post it here. Just consider it a place to get to know my hobbies and interests a bit better. Each user that registers on pharmacyit.net will also get his or her own weblog. Feel free to do the same as me. This is a community, and part of a community is getting to know each other.