Moving Medication Safety to the Next Plateau

David Classen MD, Vice President, Dave Troiano, Senior Manager, and Julie Morrison, Principal, CSC, provide an overview of the current state of inpatient medication safety and a comprehensive process and technology approach to have a positive impact, including examples that one hospital has made and the outcome. They review the industry drivers for improvement of medication safety, the extent of the medication use process and multi-disciplinary participation in it, where most med errors and ADEs occur, the technologies which contribute to a closed-loop medication management process and the current state of implementation of these technologies. They also cover how the closed-loop medication management process reduces medication errors and ADEs. The case study shows how BCMA implementation cuts across multiple processes and has multi-disciplinary impacts.