P49A

Leveraging Technology to Prevent Medication Errors

Free
Standard Price

Background: Novant Health is dedicated to making the patient experience remarkable and shaping the future of healthcare. You see evidence of this every day in the work we’re doing to transform our care models and improve quality and safety for our patients. There is also significant work going on across the system to identify best practices and create one Novant Health. Novant Health Medical Group consists of 530 outpatient physician office locations across three states on the east coast. We serve 4.7 million clinic appointments annually.

Problem statement: Medication events were the second most frequently reported safety event type for Novant Health Medical Group (NHMG). Many of these events occurred with the administration of vaccines. Leader rounding among clinics indicated wide variation for how medications, including but not limited to vaccines, are administered.

Having a consistent vaccine and medication administration process brings multiple benefits to patients and team members:

Since standardizing the vaccine administration process in 2016, NHMG has seen a 36% decrease in vaccine errors in 2017.

In 2017, the NHMG “first do no harm” steering committee endorsed a medication barcode scanning pilot project for 6 pediatric and family medicine clinics.

This 6-week pilot has demonstrated a zero rate of patient facing errors, improved efficiency (20-second improvement PER medication), and high team member satisfaction with the technology.

Following this successful pilot, medication barcode scanning for all clinics that administer medications, was endorsed by our first do no harm and clinic operations leadership.

The system-wide ambulatory roll out of bar code scanning technology was completed in October 2018 and has demonstrated the following outcomes:

Previously, we did not have a consistent way to know when we “almost” gave the wrong vaccine due to the burden of manual error reporting in ERL.

We now have data demonstrating our near miss rate is 3.1% for NHMG. This extrapolates into 54,500 errors that are NOT reaching our patients.

There were 63 clinics that started this cadence of roll out, and we have used that group to learn how to increase compliance and will roll out compliance reporting to all clinics in 2019.

We have demonstrated a compliance in scanning all medications and vaccines in this initial group of 63, from 57% compliance to 92% compliance.

Our pre- and post-survey indicate strong support of the technology by both clinical team members and providers.

The automation of entering NDC number, lot number, and expiration dates in the electronic medical record saves and average of 20 seconds per vaccine documentation.

The implementation of bar code scanning technology across a complex, multidisciplinary medical group was not without challenges, including cost, buy-in, education, and communication, but ultimately has been well received as a tool in the standard of care for NHMG patients. 

Speaker

Speaker Image for Nikki  Nissen
Nikki Nissen, MN, RN

Specialties
Session Categories

Related Products

Thumbnail for Nurse-Led Interprofessional Collaboration: Increasing Colorectal Cancer Screening Completion
Nurse-Led Interprofessional Collaboration: Increasing Colorectal Cancer Screening Completion
Background: In healthcare, missed opportunities can have a profoundly negative impact on a patient’s well-being. Morbidity and mortality in colorectal cancer (CRC) are preventable when detected early…
Thumbnail for Creating an Annual Competency Assessment Process that Results in Meaningful Quality Professional Development for Staff in the Ambulatory Setting Using the Quality and Safety Education for Nurses (QSEN) Framework
Creating an Annual Competency Assessment Process that Results in Meaningful Quality Professional Development for Staff in the Ambulatory Setting Using the Quality and Safety Education for Nurses (QSEN) Framework
Experts predict that changes in healthcare will lead to increased volume and acuity of patients in ambulatory settings. This shift has begun to increase the need for more relevant professional development for staff in this changing ambulatory care environment…
Thumbnail for Improved Quality and Staff Satisfaction through Telework
Improved Quality and Staff Satisfaction through Telework
Background: Patient care connection (PCC) is a virtual de-centralized nursing unit that triages primary care patients. This unit struggled with scheduling issues, work- life balance, and a lack of resources, which resulted in low staff satisfaction and high turnover…
Thumbnail for Improving Patient Safety and Satisfaction with Triage Nursing Resource Reallocation
Improving Patient Safety and Satisfaction with Triage Nursing Resource Reallocation
Patient safety, caller experience, nursing engagement, and staff satisfaction are all essential components of a telehealth nursing department which require constant attention and quality improvement work. Additionally, fiscal management of resources is necessary…