Enhancing Safety through Positive Patient Identification
The first goal in the Joint Commission’s 2009 National Patient Safety Goals report is “Improve the accuracy of patient identification.” The report explains the two intentions of this goal: “…first, to reliably identify the individual as the person for whom the service or treatment is intended; second, to match the service or treatment to that individual.”

To achieve this, the Joint Commission advises hospitals to use at least two unique identifiers per patient to ensure that this individual is correctly identified throughout their encounter.

The Patient Flow System (PFS) from Access helps hospitals ensure that accurate patient demographics are captured at the point of admission and point of care on electronic, barcoded forms, and wristbands that relate to the admitted patient.

By working seamlessly with products from leading barcoding hardware providers, Access’s PFS offers a closed loop solution that greatly improves the rate of positive patient identification, and prevents identification errors that result in avoidable injuries, legal action and even deaths.

Patient Label and Reporting System – Eliminate Medication Errors and Enhance Reporting
The Joint Commission also recommends use of appropriate “automated systems” to help minimize patient identification errors in clinical, administrative, drug vending and revenue cycle processes.

Access offers hospitals such a system – the Patient Label and Reporting System (PLRS). This dynamic tool complements bedside medication verification (BMV) and electronic medication administration records (eMAR) systems to further support patient safety initiatives through positive patient identification (PPID).

The Benefits of Barcoding
The U.S. Food and Drug Administration (FDA) believes that deploying barcoding technology in hospitals nationwide would result in at least 500,000 fewer adverse events over the next 20 years. Hospitals can take a major step by using Access’s PLRS alongside their BMV and eMAR applications.

At the point of registration, hospitals can use Access’s Patient Labeling System (PLS) to automatically affix barcodes on patient forms and wristbands, helping ensure positive patient identification throughout the encounter.

Now, facilities can take barcoding one step further with Access’s PLRS. When a medication order comes into the eMAR system, a pharmacy technician can avoid the time-consuming and error-prone task of writing on medication labels. Instead, Access’s PLRS automatically outputs barcoded labels for the medication container/s. Before administering medication, nurses simply scan a patient’s barcoded wristband and then the medication label to ensure a positive match.

PLRS can print two-dimensional (2D) barcodes including PDF 417, MicroPDF417, Maxicode and Aztec. Traditional, one-dimensional (1D) barcodes are often unsuitable for medication containers because they cannot be scaled small enough. In contrast, the 2D barcodes outputted by PLRS can scale as small or large as the pharmacy requires, whether the medication requiring a barcoded label comes in a large bottle or a tiny, single-dose syringe.

In addition to improving the accuracy of medication dispensing, PLRS can also be used for outputting barcoded labels for specimens, vital signs and other items collected at patients’ bedsides or in an outpatient laboratory. This is in keeping with goal three of the Joint Commission’s 2009 National Patient Safety Goals: “Improve the safety of using medications.” No matter how medication is dispensed, whether floor stock or direct from the pharmacy, the flexibility of PLRS allows it to enhance your existing processes to meet your hospital’s unique needs.

Our flexible PLRS solution works with virtually any output device, including thermal printers. This helps facilities experience the increased patient safety and elevated productivity associated with barcoded labeling of medications, while avoiding the cost of replacement hardware that other systems require.

Flexible Reporting
Hospitals often face a challenge when it comes to using reporting features in eMAR and BMV systems, because these applications have difficulty running reports that have headers and footers and fluctuating data. Access’s PLRS solves this problem, capturing the report data stream from the BMV or eMAR system, and presenting the fluctuating data in a consistent, easy to read format, such as a Medication Reconciliation Form might require. PLRS also automatically adds the required headers and footers to reports. This solution supports hospitals efforts to satisfy the eighth goal in the Joint Commission’s 2009 National Patient Safety Goals report: “Accurately and completely reconcile medications across the continuum of care.”