Healthcare Technology Featured Article

August 28, 2012

Erie County Medical Center Selects Omnicell's Solution for Safer Patient Medication


Erie County Medical Center (ECMC) Corporation – a Buffalo, N.Y.-based 550-bed hospital – will now use Omnicell’s G4 automated medication management solutions in its 550-bed hospital in Buffalo, N.Y., where it treats seriously ill patients, according to a press release.

Omnicell, Inc. is a provider of medication and supply management solutions and analytics software for healthcare facilities.

ECMC is the regional center for trauma, burn care and rehabilitation, and is a major teaching facility for the University at Buffalo, says a statement. As it treats critically ill patients, the hospital needed medication management technology for safely and securely transporting medications from the pharmacy to the automated dispensing cabinet (ADC) and to the patient’s bedside.

Heath care error is responsible for thousands of deaths a year; some of them because patients were given the wrong, or too much or too little, medication. The seriousness of this has led hospitals, like ECMC, to move away from traditional paper-based systems and focus on designing new methods that reduce errors, “using information technology to catalyze the reengineering process,” according to the American Accounting Association.

One in 20 hospital deaths, or 12,000 patients a year, are preventable, a recent U.K. survey revealed. Organizations led by the NCD Alliance, a global advocacy organization representing a network of more than 2,000 civil society organizations, are joining together worldwide to try to stop premature deaths from non-communicable diseases by 2025, partly by reducing human error.

ECMC found that Omnicell’s G4 medication management system, which connects to a single medication database, created “closed-loop movement of medications from controlled substance vaults to ADCs,” and then to patients’ bedsides, meeting Joint Commission and other regulatory standards for medication administration.

The organization also desired a mobile system that could offer medication security and streamline workflow for nurses, the statement reported. For that, ECMC selected Omnicell’s Savvy mobile medication system, which again safely moves medications from the ADC to the patient’s bedside in patient-assigned locking drawers.

Savvy also provides a clear audit trail for medications accessed by any clinician at any location by integrating with Omnicell’s Anywhere RN software, according to the press release, while Omnicell offers the hospital its Touch & Go G4 biometric ID system, designed with state-of-the-art biometric technology to improve efficiency and security, as well. The system is a Web-based application that provides nurses with real-time remote access to the Omnicell cabinet from virtually any computer or workstation in the patient care area.

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Edited by Allison Boccamazzo
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