Authors (including presenting author) :
Li KLR (1), Leung WYM (1), Cheung CHG (1), Law CH (2), Au Yeung KL (2), Lau TCL (3), Au Yeung KHS (3), Yuen WH (4), Lam MS (4)
Affiliation :
(1) Department of Pharmacy, Pok Oi Hospital, Hong Kong (2) Information Technology Section, New territories West Cluster (3) Support Service Unit, Pok Oi Hospital (4) Nursing Service Division, Pok Oi Hospital
Introduction :
There are lots of medication batches delivered to wards from pharmacy throughout the day. In the past, once the medication batches left pharmacy, details on transport status, responsible porter ID, arrival confirmation by wards cannot be traced due to lacking of proper documentation in the delivery process. Without such information captured, no action can be taken timely whenever required thus incidents of super late arrival, wrong location delivery and rarely drug loss due to unidentified causes happened from time to time.
Objectives :
To enhance the efficiency, accuracy and traceability of medication delivery within hospital by tailor made computer program plus workflow update: Medication Delivery Trace & Trace System.
Methodology :
Pharmacy CQI working group analyzed the gaps in drug delivery process and worked with cluster IT team to develop a web base Medication Delivery Trace & Trace System (MDTTS). The system development completed and piloted in 2 wards in Sept 2019 thus subsequent rolling out to all wards by May 2020. The operation involves capturing of medication batches ID to the system at different stages of the transportation from pharmacy to wards. Simulating the one in IPMOE, a program in the system was developed for generating delivery label for discharge medication which replaced previous hand-written label. Porter’s identity together with responsible medication batches for delivery (2D-barcode) were captured on the terminal of pharmacy before leaving for wards. Upon arrival of medication batches to ward, staff there will acknowledge them by scanning the 2D-barcode on delivery label to the web program at wards. System will prompt for wrong site delivery of medication batches as well.
Result & Outcome :
There were approximately 11 000 medication batches were scanned to pharmacy web terminal in May 2020. There were 33 enquiries to the system for responding ward enquiry, all can be sorted within 5 mins to identify the problem to take action. Ward staff can also get access to real-time update of medication delivery status to enhance communication with pharmacy, as well as tracing porter responsible for delivery. Since implementation of MDTTS, incidents on loss of IPMOE medication or discharge medication batches during medication delivery have not been reported. The use of MDTTS allows pharmacy to have better understanding of turnaround time and drug delivery activities distribution along a day. Further analysis of workload can be performed to enhance operational performance.
