Safety is at the forefront of hospitals across the nation. According to a landmark report To Err is Human (2000) by The Institute of Medicine (IOM), between 44,000 and 98,000 patients die every year in the United States due to preventable medical errors, including wrongful administration of medication. Beyond the cost of human life, these errors cost the healthcare industry as much as $29 million per year. This figure takes into account the expenses associated with additional care, loss of income and disability.

To reduce medication administration errors, hospitals around the country are modifying their current medical dispensing systems. Southern Ohio Medical Center (SOMC) is a hospital addressing this concern.

The 222-bed hospital in Portsmouth, Ohio, provides emergency and surgical care, and a range of other health-care services. SOMC employs 2,200 full- and part-time doctors and volunteers, and the center has a medical staff of more than 140 board-certified or board-eligible physicians and specialists and is supported by more than 800 volunteers.

One of the “Best Practices” outlined in the IOM report calls for the healthcare industry to use technology, such as bedside bar coding, to improve patient identification. SOMC quickly modernized its process from relying heavily on a two-cart dispensing system that included laptops on wheels (LOWs) and pharmacy carts, to a system that is more efficient and accurate.

The new solution, the WALLaroo 2000 wall station, features a cabinet mounted outside each patient’s room to temporarily stock the non-narcotic medications prior to dispensing.

The Challenge

SOMC’s IT department was tasked with finding a way to integrate the wall stations with a state-of-the-art access control system equipped with an access-controlled lock and reader. This would help ensure that SOMC’s “Five Patient Rights” were met: the right patient, the right medication, the right dose, the right time and the right route of administration.

“When we started our quest for an access control solution, I looked for two things. First, SOMC needed a solution that would be centrally networked with the current eMAR system, as well as have a main power source. Second, we needed to replace the magnetic strip on employee badges with a more effective technology,” says Dennis Ward, SOMC’s Information Services and Applications manager. eMAR stands for the hospital’s Electronic Medication Administration Record system for centrally managed and powered networked wall stations.