This is pretty cool. The CHEST guideline was always useful when it came to cardiology and the use of anticoagulants. And for those of you that don’t know, the Beers Criteria is a list of potentially inappropriate medications for use in the elderly. When I did LTC medicine we kept a pretty close eye on the “Beer’s List”.
You can find more information on Lexi-Drugs here.
Interesting abstract from Presse Medicale (Paris, France) talking about medication reconciliation on an internal medicine unit in a French hospital. The authors found lots or discrepancies, which isn’t a surprise. They also found that pharmacists could help identify and correct many of the discrepancies, which also isn’t a surprise.
Like many other articles I’ve read recently, this one is from data collected quite a while ago. The information was obtained from 61 patients between  June and October 2010. The article is from the March 2012 issue of the journal. I always marvel at how long it takes study results to get published.
A couple of months ago I received an email from the ASHP Section of Pharmacy Informatics and Technology (SOPIT). It basically said, “hey dude, you’re a pharmacy informatics guy. You should throw your hat in the ring for a position on the SOPIT Executive Committee.†My initial reaction was to ignore it as these things never go well for me. My personality isn’t general suited for committee work. I know this.
However, the issue wouldn’t go away. A couple of weeks later it popped up again as a friend and colleague shot me an email asking why I hadn’t completed the on-line biographical nomination form and upload my Curriculum Vitae for a position on the SOPIT Executive Committee. I gave the canned response that I wasn’t interested and that type of thing wasn’t for me. But the seed had been planted. About a week later I logged into the ASHP website and proceeded to jump through all the hoops associated with running for one of the positions on the executive committee. You know, lots of questions about how you would change the world and make it a far better pharmacy friendly place to live.
Anyway, I was informed today via email that not only did I not get nominated for a position on the executive committee; I didn’t even make the cut to be included on the list of possible candidates. Ouch! Here’s the actual wording “The Section of Pharmacy Informatics and Technology’s Committee on Nominations met this month to develop a slate of candidates for the summer 2012 elections. We received many letters and nominations for the two offices of the Section. Unfortunately, we were not able to slate you for this year’s election. “ Doh!
I won’t lie, my ego took a hit. Even though I’m generally not well suited to sit on committees I thought this would be cool. Should have gone with my gut and ignored the email. Humility is a good thing, but sometimes being humbled stings a bit. Better to think you turned them down than the other way around.
I’ll eventually get over it. People are resilient that way. In the meantime I’m forming my own committee of which I will be the Executive Vice President; I’m not President material. Haven’t decided what the committee will do, but it must involve Diet Pepsi, popcorn and movies. If you’re interested in being on the committee let me know. Space is limited.
This was part of my ASHP NewsLink today -Â A draft of the updated, revised “Accreditation Standards for Pharmacy Technician Education and Training Programs” [from ASHP] is now available for comment until September 28. After this date, another draft will be developed and made available for one more round of comments.
According to the document “the role of the pharmacy technician is evolving and varies according to state and setting. This role description draws on the one developed by the Pharmacy Technician Educators Council (PTEC)”, and the standards have been developed to:
You can see the actual document here.
Kind of cool, except for the fact that the comment period is open until September followed by another round of comments. At this rate we should have a nice set of standards by the end of… uh…hmm, 2013? Woohoo! Light speed ahead.
From a recent article in The Lancet (The Lancet, Volume 379, Issue 9823, Pages 1310 – 1319, 7 April 2012)
Kind of man versus machine study. Actually, it was more like man plus machine versus machine alone.
“The control group practices therefore used simple feedback; after collection of data at baseline, control practices received computerised feedback for patients identified as at risk from potentially hazardous prescripting and inadequate blood-test monitoring of medicines plus brief written educational materials explaining the importance of each type of error. Practices were asked to introduce changes they considered necessary within 12 weeks after the collection of data at baseline. Intervention practices received simple feedback plus a pharmacist-led information technology complex intervention (PINCER) lasting 12 weeks.”
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Two disclaimers:
Ok, let’s begin ….
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The article below appeared in the March 2012 edition of Joint Commission Journal on Quality and Patient Safety – yes, that’s a real journal. I couldn’t make this stuff up – Anyway, there’s nothing new here, we all know that ADEs are expensive. How expensive? Well, the bottom line is that “ADEs were associated with an increased adjusted cost of $3,420 and an adjusted increase in length of stay (LOS) of 3.15 days”. Depending on the number of ADEs your facility has you could easily use these numbers to justify the services of a pharmacist.
The only problem with the information is that it’s from a 20-month period between January 2005 and August 2006. I hate to break it to you Joint Commission Journal on Quality and Patient Aafety, but that makes the information all but useless. Interesting, but useless.
Wow, it’s hard to believe that it’s been over four months since I posted this piece on using MedInfoNow. The post caught the attention of someone at MedInfoNow, which resulted in some interesting dialogue in the form of email exchange and a couple of phone calls. I found the company to be genuinely interested in how their customers (clients?) use their product and what they can do to improve the experience.
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There’s a little blurb in the March 2012 issue of Pharmacy Times about the dangers of using inappropriate abbreviations in prescriptions. The author gives a couple of good examples where the use of abbreviations resulted in errors. I’ve seen my fair share of crappy handwriting and liberal use of abbreviations during my career, and I almost always read articles that talk about the problem. I find them interesting.
Anyway, there’s nothing particularly interesting about this article, but Mitch Fields, RPh left the following comment:
Well, yet another article re: dangerous and ambiguous “pharmacy” abbreviations in a pharmacy journal. I’ve seen dozens such articles over the past 30+ years, and they all suffer from the same problem: they don’t belong in the journals of practitioners who READ prescriptions, they belong in the journals of the practitioners who WRITE prescriptions!
That is one of the most logical things I’ve ever read. Mitch makes a great point.
The Institute for Safe Medication Practices (ISMP), ISMP Canada and the International Society of Oncology Pharmacy Practitioners, have launched the 2012 ISMP International Medication Safety Self Assessment for Oncology. The tool is used to “identify a baseline of oncology-related medication practices and opportunities for improvement.” ISMP is asking that any practice setting that administers chemotherapy get an interdisciplinary team together to go through the assessment; hospitals, ambulatory cancer centers, physician office practices, and so on. Once the assessment is completed the information can be submitted anonymously online through June 29, 2012.
These self assessment tools are kind of cool. ISMP will aggregate the results and your facility can use the information as a measuring stick to compare your facility to others. The Oncology self assesssment tool can be accessed on the websites of all three organizations (www.ismp.org, www.ismpcanada.org, www.isopp.org).
ISMP has other self assessment tools as well. You can see them all here.
I went through the Automated Dispensing Cabinets and Bar Coding Assessments when I was still practicing as an Informatics Pharmacists. They’re quite helpful in jumpstarting the thought process.