Thursday, May 7, 2009

Healthcare IT News Commentary: While reforming, let’s not overlook long-term care

As our federal government prepares to invest billions of dollars to modernize healthcare, and reform is at the forefront of the agenda, policymakers should take a close look at the huge opportunities at our fingertips that can dramatically reduce medication waste and increase patient safety within long-term care facilities.

If there’s ever been a time to spend every dollar wisely, it’s now. At the very time our economy is floundering, long-term care residency is growing by leaps and bounds. Baby Boomers are aging, and medical advances on all fronts enable patients to live longer with chronic conditions. Despite this need for prudent spending, $376 million of medications, mainly through unconsumed drugs, are flushed down toilets in long-term facilities every year.

Well-intentioned caregivers have little choice. Their hands are bound by red tape, contradictory regulations, and old-fashioned pharmacy relationships that don’t provide any option but to order meds in large quantities and flush or incinerate the unused portions.

Patient safety is also a significant concern as long-term care facilities struggle to manage increasingly complex drug regimens for those in their care. According to Paul Leamon, president and CEO of Wellfount, an Indiana pharmacy that services mainly long-term care facilities, their average patient takes a staggering 12 prescriptions a day. While that number itself is astounding, one must also consider the multiple numbers of people participating in the medication delivery process. There are different doctors, pharmacists, administrators and nurses across various shifts involved in each individual prescription, exponentially increasing the chance of medication errors.

Best practices can be learned, however, from acute care. Facilities across the country have achieved significant ROI and improved patient safety through on-demand, 100 percent-automated medication dispensing, which dispenses individually packaged, bar-coded prescriptions for each individual patient. No more valuable nursing time wasted by popping pills out of blister packs into little paper cups. No more millions of dollars wasted because they have to flush 27 of the 30 doses in standard-delivery blister packs because the doctor changed a patient’s prescription two days into treatment, or the patient was released, transferred to another facility, or passed away.

Wellfount is blazing the trail by implementing this technology to service its more than 40 institutions. When it’s time for Mrs. Smith’s medication, for example, the InSite unit dispenses her medications in individually sealed packets, each printed with her name, the name of the medication, and a verifying bar code. The nurse scans the bar code with a hand-held scanner, verifies the patient and medication information, and administers the meds to her. Because the prescriptions are dispensed on-demand and only one dose at a time, the opportunity for medication error or medication waste is greatly reduced.

Leamon predicts that providers of “smart” health IT technology – like the software and hardware that runs Wellfount’s remote dispensing machines – will fare well in this economic climate. There is an extraordinary new interest in saving money and increasing patient safety. Even the federal government has set aside $19 billion for technology solutions that usher in meaningful change.

There’s no doubt that we need to be strategic and forward thinking about healthcare spending. But while we’re looking down the road at the eventual benefits of this and that, we should also target the low-hanging fruit that yield immediate, dramatic and measurable effects on patient safety and rising healthcare costs.

Carla Corkern chief executive officer at Talyst, has helped build several highly-successful technology companies, and has more than 18 years of experience in high-tech and supply chain management.

See the full article here

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