The first phase of the hospital’s medication safety improvement plan included the implementation of Sunrise Pharmacy and the electronic Medication Administration Record (eMAR), both components of Eclipsys’ Sunrise Clinical Manager clinical information system.
Sunrise Pharmacy provides the hospital’s pharmacy with clinical decision support capabilities via Eclipsys’ Arden Syntax- based rules system to ensure the safe ordering and administration of medications. Sunrise Clinical Manager’s eMAR provides a shared enterprise-wide view of all medications administered to a patient to enhance the continuity of care.
Sunrise Pharmacy has already had a positive impact on improving the safety of the daily operations within our pharmacy, said Lisa Kwapniowski, PharmD, pharmacy systems manager, Children’s Hospital of Omaha. For example, we implemented medication safety practice improvements such as ‘Tall Man Lettering’ to reduce the potential for look-alike, sound-alike medication errors, and highly customized pediatric dose-range checking to ensure the right dose is ordered for each patient based upon their current medical status.
Children’s Hospital of Omaha has also begun the second phase of implementing a medication safety net across their entire organization, involving the implementation of the Sunrise Clinical Manager’s computerized physician order entry (CPOE) system and knowledge-based medication administration, a barcode medication administration system.
This system validates the five rights of medication administration (right patient, right medication, right dose, right route, and right time) to further enhance the safe use of medications at the point of care. Completion of this second phase will provide the hospital with a complete end-to-end medication management safety net.
