The National Quality Forum (NQF) has revised its
list of practices that have
proven effective in reducing adverse events. This is a very impressive list of practices. It also revealing what is not on the list.
From
a pure pharmacy informatics perspective the following practices are
good to see. CPOE and Pharmacy leadership are, of course, welcome
additions to this list. Using technology to enhance medication
reconciliation and antimicrobial stewardship will go a long way to
enhancing care as well and need a full court press by pharmacy and
informatic departments.
Bar Code Medication Administration
(BCMA) is not on the list. This is not a big surprise. I have settled
into a role and view of a counter balance to most of my pharmacy
colleagues. There is a wide effort to implement BCMA to decrease
adverse events without much evidence that it does anything. Spouting
a negative view on this practice is not comfortable nor one that I
believe will last forever. I fully believe that this practice will
eventually be proven effective. At this time it clearly is not. Given
this list of these proven practices, spending time and effort on BCMA
if all of these practices are not fully exploted, may even be harmful.
We all have limited resources and time taken away from proven practices
to ones of dubious value needs to be evaluated.
What say you?
John Poikonen
john@poikonen.NEThttp://twitter.com/poikonen
Blog =
http://pharmacyinformatics.wordpress.com/
John Poikonen, Pharm.D.