Bar code technology in hospital pharmacy cuts errors

Researchers at Brigham and Women's Hospital, evaluating the use of bar coding technology for storing and dispensing medication from the hospital pharmacy, found that the rates of medication dispensing errors and potential adverse drug events, which are dispensing errors that can harm patients, were substantially reduced when bar code scanning technology was used in the dispensing process. The findings appear in the Sept. 19, 2006, issue of the Annals of Internal Medicine.

Shortly before bar code technology was installed, the researchers observed the dispensing of 115,000 medication doses from the hospital pharmacy to measure the rate of dispensing errors. During that time, pharmacy technicians and pharmacists manually retrieved medication doses from several storage areas and relied on visual inspection alone to verify the retrieved doses before dispensing the medications to the patient care units. With the implementation of bar code technology in the fall of 2003, every dose of medication was affixed with a bar code, and these barcodes were scanned in an additional step to ensure that the right medications were being dispensed. Following barcode technology conversion, the researchers observed the dispensing of nearly 254,000 doses to re-measure the rate of dispensing errors.

By comparing the error rates before and after the implementation of bar code technology, the researchers found that the rate of dispensing errors targeted for reduction by bar code technology fell by 85 percent. The rate of potential adverse drug events (or dispensing errors with the potential to harm patients) also fell by 63 percent.

The study was supported by a grant from the Agency for Healthcare Research and Quality.