President Elect-Obama (2009), stated in a speech at George Mason University:
To improve the quality of our health care while lowering its cost, we will make the immediate investments necessary to ensure that within five years, all of America’s medical records are computerized. This will cut waste, eliminate red tape, and reduce the need to repeat expensive medical tests. But it just won’t save billions of dollars and thousands of jobs – it will save lives by reducing the deadly but preventable medical errors that pervade our health care system.
Many studies have been made and in all, the results have come back, the public is concerned with the way he or she has received medication from a healthcare organization. In a survey conducted in 1999 by the American Society of Health Systems Pharmacists, sixty one percent of the respondents said that when hospitalized they were very concerned with “being given the wrong medicine” and fifty eight percent responded that they were “being given two or more medicines that interact in a negative way” (ASHP Patient Concerns National Survey Research Report, 1999).
Healthcare professionals also have had the same concerns. In his or her training they are taught that when humans read or record information there is a small but dreadfully real error rate. Many mistakes made by pharmacies are from the misunderstanding of physician’s unreadable handwriting.
It has always been accepted that the practice of check, and double check would catch errors, which then, would be corrected before administrating any medications. This practice has been found not to work more and more. ABC Nightly News reported a case of a decimal point being misplaced when writing out an order. This caused a child who was in the hospital to be given a fatal dose of morphine (Fatal Medication Errors, Study: Children Often Getting Wrong Medication in Hospitals (2004).
The Term Paper on Support The Use Of Medication In Health & Social Care
1.1 Identify legislation that governs the use of medication in social-care settings There are : The Medicines Act 1968, the Misuse of Drugs Act 1971 (and later amendments), the Misuse of Drugs (Safe Custody) Regulations 1973 (and later amendments), the Health and Safety at Work Act (1974), COSHH, the Mental Capacity Act (2005) the Access to health records Act (1990), the Data Protection Act (1998) ...
What is a Barcode?
As defined in Implementation Guide for the Use of Bar Code Technology in Healthcare, a bar code is a graphic representation of data (alpha, numeric, or both) that is machine-readable. Bar codes are a way of encoding numbers and letters by using a combination of bars and spaces of varying widths. Both the lines and spaces are read. They may be thought of as another way of writing, because they replace key data entry as a method of gathering data. In business, correct usage of bar codes can reduce inefficiencies and improve a company’s productivity, thereby growing its bottom line (Council., 2003).
Advantages
Inventory Control
Maintaining inventory can be a difficult procedure. Healthcare organizations can have large inventory that include office, and cleaning supplies, linens, pharmaceutical, and much more. Keeping these inventory at the levels needed for the organization to run properly can be daunting. When inventory is taken by physical sight, or by check lists, it can cause inventory to be ordered that is not needed.
When barcodes are used in tracking inventory, it will show the up to date information of what is on hand. It will show what is in stock, what needs to be reordered, how much needs to ordered, which is an important tool in maintaining inventory levels. This will improve ordering unwanted or unneeded medical supplies.
Administering Medication
bar coding increases the accurateness, and reduces errors made by entering physicians’ orders manually. Bar codes are easy to use with the proper software. It validates that the proper medication is being administered to the proper patient by checking medical orders, the patient and treatment information.
The Essay on Integrated Computer Manufacturing Bar Code
General Questions 1. A common approach in product design is to consider manufacturing together with design. What is this concept? Concurrent engineering 2. The current practice in industry is to respond to the product life cycle changes by introducing manufacturing processes that can accommodate and adopt different product designs and process a wide variety of parts using the same reprogrammable ...
As stated in Implementation Guide for the Use of Bar Code Technology in Healthcare, Bar coding the employee identification badge provides positive identification of the caregiver and ensures secure access to systems based on user privileges. Utilizing bar code scanning for caregivers also accurately captures user information for charting, charging and provides an effective audit trail. When the caregiver scans the patients bar coded wristband, the caregiver has real-time access to the patient’s orders and can view what currently needs to be done for the patient. When the caregiver then scans an item or medication, the scanned bar code is compared with the order profile. If it does not match the caregiver is alerted to the discrepancy, and a potential error is averted (Council., 2003).
Disadvantages
Although using barcodes is highly affective, there are times when there are disadvantages in their use. Errors that can occur are on the printed barcode labels. They may not be printed correctly or it may contain the wrong data. Not all the medications have barcodes, and some over the counter drugs do not match with pharmaceutical databases.
More disadvantages can be the bar-coding equipment is too complicated to use; the caregiver may bypass the process and administer the medication without scanning. Also, barcode equipment must be reliable and be readily available. Many healthcare providers have been stated as saying that bar code based processes eventually will be replaced by RFID processes so we’ll wait for that to take hold (Barlow, R. 2006).
Improvements
Barcodes are extremely accurate, convenient, and a fast method to enter data. Radio frequency identification (RFID) tags have been considered as replacements for the barcodes. Unlike bar-code technology, RFID technology does not require physical use of scanning equipment. RFID data can be read through the human body, clothing and non-metallic materials (Technologies: RFID, n.d.).
The biggest drawback to using the RFID technology is the cost of the transponder tags. The tags cost several dollars each, as opposed to paper labels, which cost 20 cents each. Even though the tags can be re-used over many times the cost still is overwhelming for a company to replace its UPC tags with RFID tags (Shelly, Cashman, & Serwatka, 2004).
The Essay on Information Technology 2
Information technology pertains to electronic tools that facilitate several processes that are commonly employed in an institution, including the collection, storage, retrieval and transfer of information from one site to another. It should be understood that information technology increases the speed in data handling not only within one institution, but also within a network that may be composed ...
Conclusion
Since President Obama made his speech in 2009, many improvements have been made with medical technology. One such thing is the bar coding system. Bar coding had always been accepted in many other non-medical organizations for years. But in the healthcare organizations, it was mainly used for inventory control because of the high cost of the bar coding equipment. Not until recently, with the advances of scanning technology, it now has made it a possibility to not only mark medical equipment and supplies, but to be able to mark small packages of medication. At the same time, dramatic reductions in the cost of bar code readers have made the technology highly affordable for hospitals (Hankin, 2002).
References
ASHP Patient Concerns National Survey Research Report. (1999, September).
Retrieved August 6, 2011, from American Society of Health-System Pharmacists: http://www.ashp.org
Barcoding and RFID . (2005, Septmeber/October).
Retrieved August 4, 2011, from Patient Safety & Quality Healthcare: http://www.psqh.com
Barlow, R. (2006).
Truth or consequences about bar coding. Healthcare Purchasing News, 30(6), 78-83. Retrieved from EBSCOhost.
Council., H. I. (2003).
Implementation Guide for the Use of Bar Code Technology in Healthcare. Chicago, Illinois, United States of America. Fatal Medication Errors, Study: Children Often Getting Wrong Medication in Hospitals. (2004, April 24).
Retrieved August 4, 2011, from ABC News: http://abcnews.go.com
Hankin, R. A. (2002).
Bar Coding in Healthcare – A Critical Solution. Medical & Manufacturing Technology. Remarks of President-Elect Barack Obama As Prepared for Delivery American Recovery and Reinvestment. (2009, January 8).
Retrieved August 7, 2011, from change.gov: American Recovery and Reinvestment
Shelly, G. B., Cashman, T. J., & Serwatka, J. A. (2004).
The Essay on The Implementation Process of Bar-Coding for Medication
... patient care activity throughout the hospital stay. “Bar-coding technology has reduced medications errors by 80 %”( ... process of ordering medicine, dispensing, retrieving and administrating. Bar coding is the new technique which ... proper medication administration. Working in the healthcare field it is crucial to pay ... Memorial Hospital one of my classmates made a medication error. The patient’s outcome ...
Business Data Communication.
