Patient safety that pays for itself

A 2006 report from the Institute of Medicine (IOM) entitled “Preventing Medication Errors: Quality Chasm Series,” found that medication errors lead to more than 1.5 million preventable patient injuries each year. At the very least, these harmful medication administration errors can extend the patient length of stay, resulting in increased operating and liability costs for hospitals. Many states, and the federal government, no longer pay for mistakes that hospitals make. That means if a patient requires a longer stay due to a hospital-caused medical error, the hospital pays. Medication errors result in at least $3.5 billion in extra medical costs system-wide annually.

PatientSafe Solutions drastically reduces the potential for error in the hospital. We have reduced serious five-rights related medication errors by 100% in all of our installed hospitals, preventing over 6 million (35 million total transactions since inception) erroneous medication administration transactions. With complete PatientSafe Solutions, we guarantee that our installed system pays for itself within 12 months.

Patient safety is not a future event: there shouldn’t be any delay in investing in the safety of patients. We believe that patient safety should be a primary goal of all healthcare organizations. The PatientSafe Solutions system pays for itself within 12 months of implementation and returns significant time to nurses and caregivers so they can focus more time on patient care. It reduces harm to patients, helps to increase operating profitability, payer relations, and improves nurse retention and job satisfaction.

Motivated Nurses Make Productive Hospitals
Nurses are one of the hospital’s greatest resources. They are the principal caregiver, and they are the hub that ensures the proper flow of information between patient, doctor and healthcare partners. They ensure the patients are monitored and cared for constantly and secure in their care. Nurses stand as the interface between the care giving institution and those being cared for.

There is no demographic shortage of nurses. There are enough nurses living in the U.S. to staff all of the open positions throughout the country. So why is there a shortage in hospitals? Because hospital nurses have a difficult and demanding job, spending as much as half their time in the medication administration process. It is cumbersome, complex, and always a source of concern. Many nurses leave their shifts wondering if they administered all of the ordered medications for their patients and worry if they documented them correctly. Doctors order medications, pharmacists prepare medications, but it is the nurse who actually touches the patient and administers the medication and stands at the “tip of the spear” when medications are administered and absorbs a significant portion of the liability if something goes wrong. They must be incredibly vigilant every minute of every day to avoid harming those they have pledged to care for. A significant number of nurses leaving the profession in the last several years stated their number one reason for leaving was they they did not feel that they could safely take care of their patients. Not to mention that according to a University of Pittsburgh study the average nurse is in 55 locations every hour!

PatientSafe Solutions goes beyond complex barcode point-of-care systems that demand even more of nurse time and attention, PatientSafe Solutions actually improves nurses’ job satisfaction by giving them more time to provide patient care in an organized, managed and human-centered way.