A couple of the biggest benefits of RFID technology are that it can give hospitals an accurate count of their supplies and automate certain tasks. For hospital pharmacies, this supply management technology trend in healthcare stands to improve patient safety. It makes it easier to identify drugs nearing their expiration date and helps speed up response times to drug recalls. At the RFID in Healthcare conference in Washington, D.C., this week, the manager of University of Maryland Medical Center’s pharmacy services shared how shifting to RFID technology as part of its healthcare technology armory has helped it whittle down medication error rates.
The medical center is home to the country’s oldest, longest-running trauma center. Adrienne Shepardson noted that not too long ago, the manual process of checking trays of emergency medications for Code carts, which contain anywhere from 25 to 75 drugs, was fraught with errors. Missing or outdated drugs pushed up the error rate to 1 in 20.
But since RFID technology was introduced in 2012, using a Kit Check RFID reader along with RFID tags, it has cut its error rate down to 1 in 4,000. It has a much better grasp of its inventory. It can order drugs well before they expire. The reader is used to identify which medications need to be replenished or replaced. It has cut the amount of time it takes to prepare these trays from 20 minutes to under five.
Behavioral Health, Interoperability and eConsent: Meeting the Demands of CMS Final Rule Compliance
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Shepardson acknowledged that labeling each of the medications can be an arduous process. To create a smoother transition, Shepardson advised hospital pharmacies implementing the technology to plan ahead. One way to do that is by ordering the zebra printers that are a component of the RFID technology well ahead of time.
Medication errors are one significant source of medical errors and near misses in hospitals. Health IT can play a critical role in helping hospital staff devote more time to patients rather than tracking down missing meds.
