Spotlight on AllianceHealth Ponca City’s Bedside Medication Verification Scanning

Posted on: 2/21/20


OHA continues this weekly series featuring each of the 2019 Excellence in Quality Award submissions to highlight and share successful quality initiatives. For each submission, we will describe how the problem was identified, the improvement goal(s), interventions and outcomes. Please feel free to use this information, duplicate interventions, and share with your staff.

AllianceHealth Ponca City received an Honorable Mention for their Bedside Medication Verification Scanning initiative submitted by Jennifer Dye, risk manager.

Identifying the Problem: Following implementation of a wireless barcode scanner for scanning the patient ID and medication, scan rates were identified as well below an acceptable goal for the hospital.

The Goal: The goals were to achieve 99% bedside medication verification scan rates for both patients and medications by the end of 2019, for all inpatients, outpatients in pre-op and post-op, outpatient infusion patients, and respiratory patients.

Interventions:   
  1. A multidisciplinary Bedside Medication Verification committee was formed to evaluate processes and improvements.
  2. The pharmacy director verified medication barcodes were accurate and scannable prior to release.
  3. The CNO worked with directors and staff to identify causation.
  4. The patient safety officer analyzed scanning issues and identified that 47% of problems were related to equipment or IT, and 22% were related to scanning for charges and not related to medication administration.
  5. IT director worked with unit directors to reboot computers in patient rooms on a regular basis to prevent scanner malfunctions.
The Outcome:    
  1. From January 2018 to August of 2019, compliance with scanning increased 45%.
  2. A 2% increase in total staff medication scans occurred from January 2018 to August of 2019.
  3. Computers in patient rooms are now regularly updated to ensure all updates are pushed through.
  4. The patient safety officer reviews scanning data to identify and address trends.
  5. Staff who are not meeting with scanning requirements are interviewed to identify barriers to adhering to the scanning standards to seek input for solutions.
Comments: A Bedside Medication Verification (BMV) system was implemented several years ago to decrease the risk of medication errors through linking to the medication administration record to ensure the correct med/dose was administered to the correct patient. Creating a multi-disciplinary team to evaluate data to determine gaps was critical in identifying barriers affecting compliance with bedside medication scanning, which included equipment, IT and staff compliance challenges.