Improvement Stories:
Matching Medications With Patients
All of the Partners HealthCare hospitals have now committed to using these systems. The process will place barcodes on patients’ wristbands, on medications, and on nurses’ I.D. badges. Nurses will then use a mobile scanning system to scan all three barcodes before giving a drug. This will ensure that the patient and the medication are properly matched. Since the software to connect this entire system together (called eMAR) was adopted, drug-dispensing errors at BWH have gone down dramatically. All Partners HealthCare hospitals have made plans to bring this technology on board. Within five years, eMARs will be standard in all Partners HealthCare hospitals.