Jim Stevenson, Associate Dean of Clinical Sciences, University of Michigan, states,
"I really believe having technology like this needs to be a standard around the country... helping to prevent mistakes that can occur due to human error. ”
Michael Cohen, president of ISMP, a longtime proponent of a voluntary, nonpunitive medication-error reporting system, said, "The new legislation improves the condition under which people can report without fear of discovery of information during a plaintiff's lawsuit." Cohen told Drug Topics that the bill clearly communicates that if a person wants to report an error to a patient safety organization, he or she couldn't be told by his or her hospital not to do it. "That will increase the amount of information that we get. It will also help when we call the reporters and ask for additional information." ISMP operates a medication-error reporting program with USP.
Cohen said that another major component of the legislation is the fact that it protects information that would be shared for quality improvement purposes. Under the new legislation, PSOs will evaluate the data for any trends and recommend steps back to the reporting providers to avoid future mistakes.
Around the country, hospital pharmacy directors are generally supportive of the law, which they say will result in an increase in the number of errors that are reported. "The bill itself is common sense," said James Jorgenson, director of pharmacy at University Hospital in Salt Lake City. Just how important is it to protect those who report errors? "That's fairly important," he noted. "As much as we want to purport that there is this blameless culture, there's still tons of places out there where that's just not true."
James Stevenson, director of pharmacy services at the University of Michigan Hospital in Ann Arbor, believes that the new law will help improve overall safety throughout the nation because as people feel more comfortable reporting, the healthcare community should be in a better position to pick up trends and proactively head off problems.
It's hard to imagine a broader category for medical innovation than that of safety. CDEX has certainly made a big business of this, and maybe you can, too.
With your interesting in looking back in time.... the CDEX technology was first developed to detect explosives
The U-M Health System is the first medical center in the world to use ValiMed for this purpose. The technology was first developed to detect explosives, and is being used at three other hospitals to verify that narcotic drugs aren’t being diverted.
Jim Stevenson/pharmacist: "This technology was initially devised to help detect explosive devices with homeland security." The University of Michigan's Children's Hospital is the first in the country to use this technique to double-check drugs. Phil Mapes/father: "It's comforting to know that they're taking the extra step." For Phil Mapes' 15-year-old daughter Megan, Valimed helps balance some very high-risk medications. Phil Mapes/father: "Dopamine, she's on morphine for pain, I don't know what they all are, but there's a bunch of different ones." Twenty percent of all drug errors have serious consequences. With medication regimens getting more complex every year, Valimed provides an extra layer of safety.
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