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| Medication Safety
 Penobscot Valley Hospital is recognizing Hospital & Health-System Pharmacy Week. The observance is from October 17-23, 2010.
Penobscot Valley Hospital has made significant upgrades in its medication tracking and dispensing systems to ensure patient safety. In the last few years, the 25-bed Critical Access Hospital in Lincoln has taken steps to make sure each patient’s medications are double checked and sometimes verified up to 5 times depending on the severity of the drugs being ordered.
Pharmacist Bob Genest says when he arrived at PVH in 2007 the hospital was already doing bedside bar-code scanning of medications. “We looked at how that system was working and how it could be even further improved,” says Genest. “The pharmacy eliminated any bugs in the system through an internal operational audit to streamline the process.”
Now, when a shipment of medications is received at PVH, the drugs go through a quality process to make sure everything is accurate. The bar code on the medication is scanned into the hospital system for tracking of inventory. Then the drugs are added, physically, to the hospital’s Pyxis ® (ATM for Drugs) system, which is a large, computerized system of locked drawers which open to allow clinicians to retrieve just the medications they need for a certain patient.
If the drug is a High Alert medication, the Pyxis ® may require the clinician to verify the medication by bar code scanning it. Then the nurse administering the drug is required to scan the patient’s wrist band as well as the medication to assure it is the “Right Drug, Right Dose, Right Route, Right Patient, and Right Time.” The resulting system means a much lesser chance of errors and better patient safety.
Genest says in the last two years, the hospital has made two upgrades to the Pyxis ® system. PVH now utilizes the upgraded system known as Pyxis ® Med Station 4000, and there are Pyxis ® Med Stations in the following areas; Inpatient Department, ICU, Emergency Department, and Surgical Services so that nurses, doctors, and other clinicians have quick access to the medications they need. It also helps the PVH Pharmacy better track which departments are utilizing each type of medication the most, resulting in improved inventory management.
Just last month, Penobscot Valley Hospital reached a new contract with Comprehensive Pharmacy Services to ensure that the facility has pharmacy coverage 24 hours a day, 7 days a week either onsite or remotely. Comprehensive Pharmacy Services covers a number of hospitals in the state. Genest is employed by CPS but works exclusively at PVH.
“We’ve taken the plunge in the last 3 to 5 years and really targeted as much patient safety technology as we could,” says Genest. “Now we’re on the brink of having all our systems not only updated but on the cutting edge for small, rural hospitals.”
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