Preventable medical errors harm as many as 1.5 million people every year. Of those errors, the 400,000 that happen in hospitals are estimated to cost about $3.5 billion dollars a year, according to a 2006 report from the Institute of Medicine. As part of an effort to prevent its hospital from being part of that statistic, Desert Regional Medical Center (DRMC) purchased the Cerner RxStation™ automated medication dispensing cabinets.

"We are committed to doing everything we can to improve the health and well-being of the communities we serve; reducing the potential for medication errors is critical to that vision," said Karolee Sowle, Administrator/COO for Desert Regional Medical Center. "Automating our medication management with the Cerner RxStation cabinet allows us to eliminate a source of potential human error, and assists in preventing unnecessary harm and cost to our patients and organization."

The RxStation healthcare device creates a fully automated medication-management process by connecting the medication dispensing unit directly to the Cerner Millennium® solution for the patient electronic medical record (EMR). When clinicians go to the cabinet to retrieve medications, they open the patient's EMR and select the medication to be administered. A drawer on the RxStation cabinet containing the appropriate medication at the appropriate dose opens, allowing the clinicians to retrieve the medication.

Since the medication-dispensing process is automated, the risk of a clinician grabbing the wrong medication is virtually eliminated. The RxStation healthcare device also aids pharmacies with medication inventory management by instantly updating the quantities of available medications and triggering alerts for those running low.

"The RxStation cabinet is a significant advancement in medication-administration management," said Bill Miller, Vice President of DeviceWorks for Cerner. "Since the RxStation cabinet is connected directly to the Cerner Millennium EMR solution, we can ensure the medication ordered by the physician is actually what is being administered, both safeguarding patients and ultimately creating a single source of truth in the EMR where information about the patient's care resides."

The RxStation automated medication-dispensing units work in conjunction with the Cerner PharmNet® solution to provide a fully integrated medication management solution. When fully implemented, more than 500 nurses, 25 pharmacists and 30 pharmacy technicians will rely on the RxStation to manage the medication-administration process.

The RxStation cabinet has been designed in a modular format to enhance clinician and pharmacist workflow. The modular design allows healthcare organizations to customize the types of drawers in the cabinet from medication access to drawer dimension to best fit the needs of individual departments. The RxStation healthcare device will be on display at the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists (ASHP) Midyear Clinical Meeting Dec. 3-5 in Las Vegas.

healthtechwire