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Everyone agrees that ensuring patient safety is a top priority for healthcare providers. The first step lies in accurately identifying the patient. Technology is providing some outstanding advances in this area, but more needs to be done.
Balancing the need for patient privacy and security presents some special challenges, but the two really do work in concert—when a provider uses a system that will accommodate and grow with its growing needs.
Stated simply: the key to patient safety is first of all, communication. From the first electronic signature (with hard copies to the patient) to discharge orders, technology makes quick, efficient care possible…but only if the systems in place really accommodate the needs of the institution and its patients.
The most basic need of any provider is knowing, first of all, the patient you’re dealing with. It seems simple enough, but it’s a step with lots of gaps in application. The FormFast approach provides solutions: Identify the patient early, offer checks and balances that help eliminate errors, and make systems cost effective and easy to use.
First, FormFast’s automated forms software allows for quick, accurate identification of all chart forms in the admissions process. By avoiding expensive preprinted forms and printing forms on plain
paper, hospitals not only cut costs and save staff time previously used in assembling records, but they also prevent errors inherent in stockpiling (and using) forms that have become outdated. These records can provide traditional information (name, record number, doctor, etc.,). It can also imprint records with a bar code.
Patients traditionally receive the all-important wristband during the admissions process. Again, FormFast provides the answer —in a cost-effective software solution that also accommodates bar coded wristbands and medical records. Increasingly, providers are seeing the bar-coded wrist band as an important patient safety check: scanning the band will help ensure correct patient identification for medication administration, lab work, transfusions, testing and other procedures.
But hospitalization isn’t static. Orders change, additional forms are required, and wristbands get lost. Again, FormFast provides a quick, efficient, and safe remedy: Forms on Demand. Nurses (or other staff) on a division can print replacement wristbands, additional chart forms, or other materials quickly and in the exact quantities needed. These forms arrive preprinted with the patient ID information…eliminating the extra step (and possibility for errors) that accompanied the old blue card system.
FormFast Site offers another benefit/security check for patients and staff. Storing the most current version of standing orders and other forms ensures that mechanical errors (which cause the greatest percent of patient care errors) can be avoided.
Patient security is further enhanced when technology is also put into play to identify staff that are administering medications, tests, or procedures. These not only offer an important (and time saving) record of the provider/patient interaction, but they also provide an extra check to help avoid errors.
Much of the important technology to achieve these results already exists. Even more is in development—especially as hospitals move toward the electronic medical record and its special considerations. But the reality remains: hospitals must balance these opportunities with bottom line financial considerations. Finding the solution will require careful selection of a software provider who can meet current and future needs of the provider—who will partner with the provider for today and tomorrow. The choices surrounding this opportunity will vary widely…but the stakes have never been higher…or the rewards for patient safety, more compelling.
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