June 2009 – Page 2 – Jerry Fahrni

“What’d I miss?” – Week of June 14th

June 20, 2009June 19, 2009 by Jerry Fahrni

As usual there were a lot of things that happened during the week, and not all of it was pharmacy or technology related. Here’s a quick look at some of the stuff I found interesting.

Cool Technology for Pharmacy

June 18, 2009 by Jerry Fahrni

Alaris System: “The AlarisÂ® System by Cardinal Health is designed for infusions and patient monitoring. It helpsÂ protect the patient and clinician from consequences of medical errors and helps positively affect patient outcomes through continuous improvements in clinical practice. The point-of-care platform standardizes every type of infusion on a common user interface and adds respiratory monitoring and bar coding as needed. Also a state-of-the-art computer, it bridges the gap between IV and IT to help prevent harm and optimize care.”

ISMP launches first self assessment of ADC safety

June 18, 2009 by Jerry Fahrni

ISMP.org: “More than 80% of US hospitals have implemented automated dispensing cabinets (ADCs) as an important part of their drug distribution system, making the evaluation of practices surrounding this technology an essential step in ensuring patient safety. To help meet healthcare organizationsâ€™ growing need for assistance in this area, ISMP has introduced the first Medication … Read more

Making PCOs easier to use in the Siemens Pharmacy System.

June 17, 2009 by Jerry Fahrni

Siemens utilizes an unfortunately complicated system for building reusable order sets in their pharmacy system. UnlikeÂ Meditech where you can use formulary medications, enter them the way they appear on the order set, give the newly created order set a name and save it; Siemens Pharmacy requires that you first construct a series of “Predefined Common Orders” (PCOs) and use those as building blocks for each order set. PCOs are not only used as building blocks for order sets, but can be used to create shortcuts for medication order entry as well. Each PCO must have a unique name and be specific to the order set from which is hails. Reusing PCOs in multiple order sets creates maintenance issues when one order set makes a revision and the other does not.

Visit to Northwestern Memorial Hospital in Chicago

June 16, 2009 by Jerry Fahrni

During my recent trip back east I had the opportunity to drop in on the inpatient pharmacy at Northwestern Memorial Hospital in downtown Chicago. The reason for the visit was simple. I was already in Chicago for the ASHP Summer Meeting and Northwestern utilizes some of the same pharmacy automation as Kaweah Delta. One would think that the same automation would equal the same procedures, but nothing could be further from the truth. This is one of the fundamental problems with hospital pharmacy in general. Lack of standardization equates to the inability to share information across multiple facilities. Best practice is elusive when talking about automation in pharmacy.

ASHP Summer Meeting – day 2

June 15, 2009 by Jerry Fahrni

This has been an interesting and exciting day so far. I spent the morning at the ASHP exhibit hall looking at two products that had piqued my interest the day before: AutoCool and AutoSplit from Talyst.

Hello from the ASHP Summer Meeting in Chicago

July 21, 2009June 14, 2009 by Jerry Fahrni

Today was my first official day at the ASHP Summer Meeting in Chicago. I spent the first half of the day in the exhibit hall checking out the vendors and all the cool stuff they had on display. The exhibit hall wasn’t open to everyone, but I had the unexpected surprise of receiving a vendor’s … Read more

Barcodes on patient wristbands.

June 13, 2009 by Jerry Fahrni

Barcode.com: “Often times, information that Hospital administrators would like to include in the barcode is far too much in relation to the wristband space. While 1-D barcodes cannot always fit all of the information, they can be scanned by all types of barcode readers, unlike 2-D barcodes which can fit more information, but require a … Read more

“What’d I miss?” – Week of June 7th

June 12, 2009 by Jerry Fahrni

As usual there were a lot of things happening this week, and not all of it was pharmacy or technology related. Here’s a quick look at some of the stuff I browsed this week.