The regional hospital board decided last week to support in principal kicking in $547,894 for a new closed loop medication system at St. Mary’s Hospital that will form part of a Clinical and Systems Transformation (CST) project being undertaken by Vancouver Coastal Health (VCH).
The CST project is a joint initiative of VCH, Providence Health Care and the Provincial Health Services Authority meant to help streamline care and create “standardized, evidence-informed clinical practices” across the board.
The project is expected to cost the health authorities upwards of $842 million over 10 years and Mike Nader, chief operating officer with VCH, was before the Feb. 26 Sunshine Coast Regional Hospital District (SCRHD) to explain the project and solicit funds for some needed equipment to implement it.
He said the project would enable patient records to travel easily between medical facilities, which is a problem currently.
Often medical records have to be printed out and sent with patients between facilities or faxed over, which is not efficient.
The new system would also allow for computerized physician order entry, cutting down on errors from misread prescriptions, and it would provide an electronic way for nurses and professionals to document changes in patient needs.
Another element of the project includes implementing closed-loop medication management systems in hospitals and Nader said VCH would like to start with St. Mary’s Hospital later this year.
He said the closed loop medication system would see barcodes assigned to patients. Doctors would then input patient prescriptions into the system and those prescriptions would be verified by a pharmacist before being unit-dosed in sealed packages with the patient’s barcode affixed.
The sealed medication packages would be stored in secure dispensing cabinets at the hospital where nurses could pick up the prescriptions, ensure the barcodes for patients and prescriptions match, and then administer the prescriptions properly.
Nader said the new system will greatly cut down on the wrong type or amount of medication being given to patients in hospital, mentioning one out of province report that showed great success.
“In the first month that they implemented the system they identified 200 catches where the nurses were attempting to give the wrong drug or the wrong dose to the patient and it was caught through the bar code scanning,” Nader said.
“That was in one month.”
SCRHD directors were intrigued by the project and said they will have enough in reserves at the end of the year to honour the request for funding, however, they wanted more information before signing the cheque.
Chair Frank Mauro asked representatives of VCH to return to the next hospital district meeting on March 26 to provide more information.
If the closed loop medication system goes forward the total cost for the system would be about $1.36 million and VCH has said it would pay 60 per cent, leaving the SCRHD to pick up the remaining 40 per cent at a cost of $547,894.
