Aug 13, 2012The pharmacy department of the University of Maryland Medical Center (UMMC), a 750-bed hospital located in Baltimore, is employing an RFID-based solution to aid in the stocking of medication kits transported around the hospital for use with patients in the event of emergencies. Thanks to the technology, provided by RFID startup firm Kit Check, the hospital knows what was loaded onto each tray to form a crash-cart kit, as well as which medications were used and which are approaching their expiration dates. In addition, the facility has reduced the amount of time employees must spend loading each emergency medication tray, from approximately 20 minutes down to less than 5 minutes.
Emergency medications are used for patients who may have experienced a heart attack or a severe allergic reaction requiring immediate intervention. Each kit comes with about 25 to 50 items, and is sealed until one of those supplies is required, at which time the kit's plastic covering is removed and the necessary items are taken out. Once the kit is no longer needed, it is then returned to the pharmacy, where staff members must determine what has been removed, and thus what must be replaced. The workers then reseal the kit for reuse, and also record the expiration dates of every item within the kit, in order to ensure that nothing is soon due to expire.
Until the RFID system's installation, which occurred in April 2012, each expiration date had to be manually handwritten on a piece of paper, with two staff members checking every kit for errors.
The pharmacy department chose to utilize Kit Check system to automate this process, says Adrienne Shepardson, the hospital's manager of central pharmacy services, thereby providing greater assurance that a mistake is never made. For example, if an item were not replaced within a kit, and thus was not available during an emergency, a patient's health could be at risk. If a medication expires, it must be discarded without being used, causing the hospital to incur an unnecessary expense.
Kit Check provided the hospital with a device known as the Kit Check scanning station, amounting to an enclosed RFID reader. Once the tray is placed into the reader, a user can press the Scan button, thereby triggering the device to interrogate any tags within. The reader is wired to a PC that transmits read data to a cloud-based server, hosted by Kit Check. Software on the server displays the results on the PC's monitor.
Once a read is accomplished, Kit Check's software displays which items are missing, which are present in extra quantities and which are soon due to expire. Workers can then use that information to restock the tray.
Finally, the user prints a charge sheet that is placed at the top of the kit, and is then wrapped over with clear plastic. The charge sheet lists the items on the tray and, in large bold letters, the nearest expiration date among those supplies.
Additionally, software allows hospital management to identify which hospital kits might have approaching expiry dates, so that those kits can be located and the expiring products removed. In the event of a recalled medication, the software allows employees to input that medicine's name, locate all kits containing that product and list each kit tray's ID number so that it can be located and the item removed.
UMMC began using the system on Apr. 1, as Kit Check's first end user (the solution is now being utilized by several other facilities as well). When the medical center began working with Kit Check, the pharmacy was unsure of the exact number of kits it had throughout the hospital. That number is still unclear, Shepardson says, since kits continue to be located that had not yet been tagged. Bringing the kits into the RFID system, she says, has afforded her a better understanding of the hospital's inventory.
The greatest gain, UMMC reports, has been in reducing the risk of manual errors as trays are loaded. Even with a thorough manual method of tracking items loaded onto trays, and with a pharmacy manager double-checking the process, there is still the potential for errors, Shepardson says. Those who repeatedly count medications all day, she adds, can become fatigued and make mistakes. "There's always that worry. This system takes out that human element... it gives me more peace of mind."
