Improving Patient Safety…One Bar-Code at a Time

[Health IT Social]

As Texas Regional Medical Center moves toward meeting ARRA EHR Meaningful Use requirements, we’re looking for ways to boost our patient safety with the latest technology.

We identified forms management as one area where we could improve. We decided to go with Siemens EDM to better manage our patient documents within electronic charts, but getting forms into this system would’ve involved a manual process that could delay patient care. There was also the risk of forms going into the wrong record, or the incorrect place in the chart.

So we started looking for an e-forms system, and selected Access because they’re the vendor that Siemens recommends and when we saw a demo it was clear they could meet all our forms needs. So now, we register a patient in Siemens MedSeries4 and print a complete forms packet with one click. Each form has a patient ID and a form ID, so that when we scan it Siemens EDM knows what the document is and whose chart it should go in. We also have barcoded wristbands so that when patients get to the floors we can identify our patients for lab draws and as part of our electronic medication administration process.

One of the nice things about the Access systems is that our registrars and nurses can launch the forms directly from their Siemens portal, so they don’t need to have Siemens open in one window and Access in another. That doesn’t sound like a big deal but when you’re in a pressure situation and trying to give quality care and service to as many patients as possible, those few seconds saved each time really add up. The nurses and registrars also don’t have to remember which forms go with which patients like they used to before – they just select the patient, click a button and they’re good to go.

The HIM team is saving a lot of time with the Access system, too. Instead of them having to manually enter data and verify each and every form, the forms just go into the right patient’s EHR in Siemens EDM. That’s not just cutting out hours of work each day, but also eliminating the chance of human error.  

Several years ago our pharmacy system started generating bar-coded labels to put on medications before we dispensed them. The trouble was that the bar-codes were tiny and, for some reason, were placed on the edge of the label. So they were hard to scan, and if the label creased at all the bar-code scanner wouldn’t read them. In the end, most of our nurses gave up. They’re not going to mess with something that’s difficult and often doesn’t even work.

We came to Access with the problem and within weeks we’d gone live with their solution. Now, a big bar-code is printed on each label and it’s where it should’ve been all along – in the middle of the label. So when labels crease at the corners – and there’s no way to stop that – it doesn’t matter, because the barcode reads first time, every time. Once we’d showed the nurses how easy it was and that it works they were sold. So now we’ve added an extra layer of protection for our patients.

To hear more about how TRMC-Sunnyvale is improving patient safety  sign up today for their upcoming webinar.

Kristi Box is the Director of Clinical Informatics at Texas Regional Medical Center - Sunnyvale.