Part A:
Company Background Optel Vision, a division of the Optel Group, is an organization that helps global pharmaceutical companies to comply with legal and regulatory requirements in the area of product serialization and traceability. The organization has regional offices in Canada, Brazil, India and Ireland with a workforce approximated to consist of 500 professionals. OptelMedevon division under Optel Vision focuses on the traceability project. Optel Vision’s mission is to integrate technologies to assure product safety and client business sustainability by putting in place or improving procedures based on ISO and GAMP standards.
Project Goal
This project seeks to provide a snapshot of the drugs supply chain within various acute care centers in the United States. Investigating and reporting the paths that drugs take from their delivery to the acute care center through the administration to the patients helps the organization in tracking the final part of drugs’ movement chain. By tracing this end of the movement chain, the project complements the overall traceability initiative by the organization. This is an improvement of the current process where most companies end the tracking of their medical products once they have reached the health organizations.
Company Objectives:
1. What are the key steps in the medication supply chain from arrival in the hospital to administration to the patient?
2. What are the technologies (companies) used to follow the medication
Organisational policy and procedures should include how to receive and record medication, safe storage, prescribing, dispensing, administration, monitoring and
In the video Escape Fire, I was so flabbergasted by the numbers and health outcomes we as a society have let our nation become. One of the most heart-wrenching evidence is, even though our health care industry is so expensive our health outcomes are the worse. 75% of disabilities and dead’s are preventable, according to the film.
Encourage the use of computer-generated or electronic medication administration records. Plan for the implementation of computerized prescriber order entry systems. Consider the use of machine-readable code (i.e., bar coding) in the medication administration process. Use computerized drug profiling in the pharmacy. Be a demanding customer of pharmacy system software; encourage vendors to incorporate and assist in implementing an adequate standardized set of checks into computerized hospital pharmacy systems (e.g., screening for duplicate drug therapies, patient allergies, potential drug interactions, drug/lab interactions, dose ranges, etc.)”. (Association,
In the classroom, it is very important to have lab safety. In a hospital pharmacy, lab safety is essential to ensuring a safe dosage to each patient. Throughout my time interning as a pharmacist at the UVM Medical center, I was often observing how much pharmacists used DoseEdge software. DoseEdge automated system that assists the process of dose routing and preparation. This product of Baxter has allowed the tasks of pharmacy change. The focus of my project was “How does current and future technology affect efficiency and accuracy in pharmacy practice?”. Through my research of Baxter’s website, articles about their product, and reports of advancing technologies in pharmacy, I found that DoseEdge is very successful in productivity and safety in the workplace. Before DoseEdge, everything was required to be prepared by hand. This required a lot of responsibility for for pharmacists and technicians to make the correct dosage in the quickest manner. Medicine is very important to a hospital, so it is very important to have the most efficient way in preparing and distributing it. This allows pharmacist to have a better way of double-checking the preparation of drugs. In each IV hood, there is an overhead camera that takes pictures of what drug and how much of it the technician is using. Pharmacist can view multiple orders all by computer without the need of being physically next to the technician. There are also requirements to have two pharmacists check the same order for high risk drugs like chemotherapy. This
The issues in the article entitled “Benefits of Unit Dose Packaging” by Kate DeMutis discusses the problems that arise in regards to compliance of patient’s using medications and wound care supplies as ordered by their healthcare providers. It appears that with the “growing number of prescriptions in the United States it can be concluded that incorrect use of the medications or wound care supplies is impacting ones recovery in a timely fashion,” (DeMutis, 2015) and perhaps unit dosing may be the solution.
"In the past two decades or so, health care has been commercialized as never before, and professionalism in medicine seems to be giving way to entrepreneurialism," commented Arnold S. Relman, professor of medicine and social medicine at Harvard Medical School (Wekesser 66). This statement may have a great deal of bearing on reality. The tangled knot of insurers, physicians, drug companies, and hospitals that we call our health system are not as unselfish and focused on the patients' needs as people would like to think. Pharmaceutical companies are particularly ruthless, many of them spending millions of dollars per year to convince doctors to prescribe their drugs and to convince consumers that their specific brand of drug is needed in
1.1 There are many procedures in place for ensuring the safe transit, distribution and obtaining of medication i.e.
The nurse must verify the physician’s medication order, including the dose and time, and then the pharmacy is responsible for their own checks and balances via the BCMA system in order to complete the dispensing phase of the medication (Gooder, 2011). The nurse enters the BCMA system with a login and password and is able then to see a list of the virtual due list for a specific patient. The computer on wheels is then taken to that patient’s room and the five rights of medication administration begin. As nurses, we are taught to use the five rights of drug administration are (1) right patient (2) right medication (3) right dose (4) right route and (5) right time. By scanning the barcode on the patient’s hospital identification band, the nurse then asks for the patient to verbally state their name and date of birth, which can be verified by the nurse on the virtual due list and then choses the medication that are due for administration at that time. The medication is dispensed and the nurse is able to scan the barcode on the medication, the scanning triggers the automatic documentation of the medication given (Kelly, 2012).
It is VERY IMPORTANT to keep the medication information up to date especially when distributed by the
There are five stages of the medication process: ordering/prescribing, transcribing and verifying, dispensing and delivering, administering, and monitoring and reporting. (Pamela & Terri, 2010). Once the advanced practitioner or physician makes a call on the medication needed, the prescription goes to the pharmacist, who then allows for the dispensing of the medication that will either go in the hands of a patient or a nurse. In both cases, it is the responsibility of the individual administering the medication to verify the 6 rights. These include, the right person, right time, right drug, right route, right dose and right documentation. It is essential to realize multiple destinations
Medication Reconciliation is defined by the Joint Commission as the process of checking and rechecking a patient’s current medication list to the patient’s orders. Within a MedRec program, three steps must be followed to ensure patients have the correct medications at admission and discharge: Verification, Clarification, and Reconciliation (Greenwald et al., 2010; Ruggiero et al,. 2015). MedRec should not occur once, but multiple times especially when a patient moves from department to department. The more a patient moves, the more liable they are for a medication error due to poor communication. MedRec is done for the simple reason of catching those medication errors and correcting them before they can do any harm (The Joint Commission, 2006). Medication errors effect nearly 1.5 million people who enter the hospital setting in the USA. At least every patient has one medication discrepancy between admission and discharge, which leads to rehospitalizations due to hospital-setting medication errors (Institute of Medicine as cited by Wilson et al,. 2015). With nurses at the forefront of a patient’s medication regime, pressure is put on them to provide the necessary education and safety to prevent medication related rehospitalizations. Included in the causes for medication errors is miscommunication between departments taking care of the same patient (Allison et al., 2015). Many medication errors are preventable by the implementation of electronic orders. The use of electronic
3. Medication errors, handoff process and information quality. Chiru, Alina M; Baxter, Ryan. Business Process Management Journal 19.2, (2003): 2011-2016
Other factors include the use of distribution systems, drug shortages, pharmaceutical manufacturer mergers and acquisitions, patent expirations, cost and availability of raw materials, and profit driven businesses (Abramowitz & Cobaugh, 2016). The rising cost of prescription drugs and healthcare in general challenges the access and affordability of quality care to consumers not just in the United but also consumers around the world (GEN News, 2012). In addition to cost and access to care, the continuous rise in prescriptions drugs may have a negative effect on utilization of healthcare and satisfaction with healthcare system (Abramowitz & Cobaugh,
Porter’s Five Competitive Forces Analysis is a framework developed by Michael E. Porter of Harvard Business School for study of industry analysis by analyzing five competitive forces which define industry and its business strategy. These five competitive forces determine the competitive advantages, disadvantages and attractiveness or profitability of industry.
Yes, there is an impact on the pharmaceutical company, like those in the US as a result of differential prices between that country and other nations.