August 12, 2010 issue of the ISMO Medication Safety Alert the issue of : “We have received a number of reports about the labeling of Xactdose unit dose liquid containers from VistaPharm, Inc., of Birmingham, AL. The company recently changed the way the drug concentrations are expressed on their labels. An example is phenytoin oral [...]
The June 17, 2010 issue of ISMP Medication Safety Alert I received has an interesting article on the unintended negative consequences of the Centers for Medicare & Medicaid Services (CMS) regulation requiring medications to be administered within 30 minutes of their scheduled dosing time. I’m sure that the CMS 30-minute rule was created with good [...]
While reading through a pharmacy listserv I came across a seemingly simple piece of software that fills an important gap in the pharmacy distribution process. RxVerify, by Pharmacy Ideas, is a bar-code verification system used during the medication restocking phase for code boxes, anesthesia trays, transport boxes, etc.
Medilyzer is a smartphone application designed to provide mobile information and drug interaction checking for various over-the-counter (OTC) medications. The application is available for both the iPhone and Android smartphones, and according to the Medilyzer website a BlackBerry edition is on its way.
CMIO: “Allscripts will integrate IntrinsiQ’s IntelliDose chemotherapy management tool into its EHR product suite as a new offering for physician practices. The Waltham, Mass.-based IntrinsiQ’s IntelliDose calculates and tracks the administration of chemotherapy treatments and will enable Allscripts’ multi-specialty and oncology clients to manage oncology patient care workflow, according to the company. Under the agreement, oncology practices will [...]
Computerized Provider – or Physician if you like – Order Entry (CPOE) is an older technology that has been in the spotlight for the better part of the past year thanks to the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act (ARRA) and key components of meaningful use. Because of the “stimulus” offered by ARRA many hospitals across [...]
I’ve mentioned this before several times on this blog, but feel like I have to say it yet again; we need to start standardizing certain things about health information technology. The lack of standardization reared its ugly head at me again last week when our Pyxis med stations kept dropping medications off of patient’s active [...]
I was reading an article in the most recent issue of Patient Safety & Quality Healthcare and I ran accross the paragraph below. I had to chuckle to myself. Would this be the definition of irony? Feel free to comment on what you think is wrong with this paragraph. Don’t look too hard because it [...]
I finally got around to digging into the article on bar code medication administration (BCMA) in the most recent issue of the NEJM. It’s and interesting article that has already receiving a lot of press. It will probably be tossed around for months. One thing I found amusing in the article was figure 1 on [...]
A recent post by John Poikonen got me thinking about medication errors. They’re part of every pharmacists day, but we rarely give them much thought. I’ve been a pharmacist for more than 10 years now and I’ve make my fair share of mistakes. I would like to think that none of those errors caused harm, [...]
