MEDICATION ERRORS
Benefits of medication management at Northumberland Tyne and Wear NHS Mental Health Foundation Trust. Case study
Safe and effective management of medication at Northumberland Tyne and Wear NHS Foundation Trust is essential due to the complex medication regimes that their patients need for our ongoing care. The Trust first decided to look into automating their medication management process to: l Improve patient safety and reduce medication dispensing and administration errors
l Enhance productivity to make the best use of limited pharmacy and nursing resources
l Improve patient outcome by expanding the reach of the clinical pharmacy service
l Save money and develop their commercial potential.
According to Ewan Maule, deputy chief pharmacist at the Trust, the decision was made to implement an Omnicell VBM 200F into pharmacy to fill medication adherence packs, as well as automated medication dispensing cabinets to manage medication on the wards. “Northumberland Tyne and Wear NHS
Foundation Trust is a Global Digital Exemplar site which means we will share our learning and experience of technology with other Trusts,” Ewan explained. “The benefits we have seen since automation, coupled with the decision to move from a model of three pharmacy departments to one single dispensing hub, have been significant. “The VBM 200F has automated the process for producing medication adherence pill packs for outpatients. Patients with mental health illness often have complex medication regimes and it’s imperative that they take the right dose, of the right medication, at the right time to ensure there
JUNE 2018
are no adverse impacts on their treatment plan. While medication adherence pill packs have a crucial role to play in this, filling them manually was particularly onerous for staff and always ran the risk of human error.” A review of the first three months of technology use within the pharmacy found:18 l Significant reduction of medication error rates for dispensing patient adherence packs: The non-automated error rate prior to installation was 0.69%. However, post implementation no errors (0%)
were associated with the automated dispensing system. This meant that the machine itself provided 100% accuracy throughout the dispensing process
l Reduced time taken to dispense medication adherence packs and number of staff required in the dispensing process: It had previously taken 20 minutes to manually prepare one pack. Post automation this was reduced significantly to just 3 minutes per pack. As a result, the pharmacy estimates that 2-3 WTE staff roles have been saved by the installation of the system. It has allowed staff to follow more clinical roles including the continued development of optimisation strategies to improve patient outcomes and cost effectiveness of medicines; advising patients on their medication and working as part of a multi- disciplinary team to educate patients on important steps to improve and maintain their health
The real tragedy behind these figures is the patients, families and relatives of loved ones affected by these unavoidable
mistakes. Paul O’Hanlon, managing director, Omnicell UK & Ireland.
l Reduction in medication errors: Pre-automation 48 prescriptions included errors, during the course of the study the number of errors recorded were just seven and this was a result of human error post dispensing by the machine – further staff training has now helped to reduce this further still
l Developing the commercial potential of the Trust: The study and process validation has enabled the Trust to approach neighbouring Acute Trusts to offer a safe and reliable dispensing system for their patient’s medication adherence packs. This will provide the Trust with a new revenue stream as well as saving the Acute Trusts money, as they will no longer have to outsource from external organisations.
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