It HAS been an interesting TWO years... educational too.
University of Utah Health Sciences Center Addresses Narcotics Diversion
ValiMed system meets JCAHO and ASHP Standards by validating return of controlled substances from the operating room.
ROCKVILLE, Md. and SALT LAKE CITY, Ut.—January 26, 2005—Narcotic drug diversion is a long-standing problem for healthcare organizations. Many studies find that between five and 10 percent of anesthesiologists, nurses, and pharmacists have used this class of medications illegally. By substituting saline or water, narcotics-abusing clinicians had an undetectable source of drugs that compromised patient safety.
At the University of Utah Health Sciences Center, the University of Utah Hospital is one of the first hospitals in the country to tackle the problem at the source. Using ValiMed, a new device from CDEX, the hospital now validates the contents of all returned narcotics from the operating room.
“ValiMed pretty much eliminates a major source of narcotic drug diversion,” said Jim Jorgenson, Director of Pharmacy Services, and Associate Dean for Clinical Affairs, University of Utah College of Pharmacy. “Its spectral analysis ensures every returned syringe contains narcotics and not just water. The machine is the size of a shoebox and fits in our satellite pharmacy; any pharmacy technician can perform the validation in seconds.”
Technology Stops Medical Mistakes [b/]Reported April 2006 University of Utah pharmacist Jim Jorgenson says preventing those errors is his main goal "We average about 2 million individual doses of medication a year here," says Jim Jorgenson, R.Ph., a pharmacist at the University of Utah in Salt Lake City.
To eliminate errors, pharmacists now have a new tool -- ValiMed.
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