Assessment of hospital emergency medication kit use at a large academic medical center with automated dispensing machine technology.

PURPOSE: Hospital emergency medication kits (HEMKs) are used to provide certain critical medications in emergent situations, despite many technological advancements for patient safety and medication distribution. We sought to evaluate HEMK usage and analyze associated costs to identify and recommend process improvements. METHODS: Mayo Clinic in Rochester, MN, is a large multisite academic medical center with 2 hospital campuses and many ambulatory clinics. All documentation of the approximately 250 HEMKs in circulation was analyzed from January to November 2017. The primary outcome was HEMK use. Secondary outcomes included individual medication usage and associated costs. These data were then used to recommend process improvements. RESULTS: Of 880 HEMKs evaluated, 675 (76.7%) were used, resulting in expiration 23.3% of the time. A total of 1,024 emergency medications were used, most commonly for hypoglycemia. Many of these medications are also available in automated dispensing machines for patient care use. Cost analysis revealed an average annual cost of nearly $200,000 associated with HEMKs. The results of our analysis indicated little added benefit of HEMKs in the setting of automated dispensing machine optimization. Steps for HEMK retirement are described. CONCLUSION: HEMKs offered little added benefit considering technological advancements that have been made in patient safety and medication distribution since their inception. Retirement of HEMKs is anticipated to increase pharmacy operational efficiency by using automated dispensing machine technology and appropriate emergency response protocols to ensure optimal patient care.

Enhancing participant safety through electronically generated medication order sets in a clinical research environment: a medical informatics initiative.

While clinical medicine is often well supported by health system information technology infrastructure, clinical research may need to create strategies to use clinical-medicine informational technology tools. The authors describe a medication-safety initiative that was carried out in a National Institutes of Health Clinical and Translational Science Award (CTSA)-sponsored clinical research environment. A web based, medical informatics application was designed and implemented that allowed research groups to build protocol specific, electronic medication templates that were subsequently used to create participant-specific medication order sets for conductance of clinical research activities in the CTSA-sponsored clinical research environment. The medical informatics initiative eliminated typewritten or handwritten medication orders, created research protocol-specific templates meeting institutional order-writing requirements, and formalized a rigorous review and approval process. Enhancing safety in medication ordering and prescribing practices in a clinical research environment provided the background for multidisciplinary cooperation in medical informatics.