Tuesday, August 29, 20064
TIME.com: VA hospitals are the best
Their EMR is a major reason. Although I don't think it works this well:
Most private hospitals can only dream of the futuristic medicine Dr. Divya Shroff practices today. Outside an elderly patient's room, the attending physician gathers her residents around a wireless laptop propped on a mobile cart. Shroff accesses the patient's entire medical history--a stack of paper in most private hospitals. And instead of trekking to the radiology lab to view the latest X-ray, she brings it up on her computer screen. While Shroff is visiting the patient, a resident types in a request for pain medication, then punches the SEND button. Seconds later, the printer in the hospital pharmacy spits out the order. The druggist stuffs a plastic bag of pills into what looks like a tiny space capsule, then shoots it up to the ward in a vacuum tube. By the time Shroff wheels away her computer, a nurse walks up with the drugs.
Comments
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Greg P
But the way things seem to be going now in the VA, the drug ordered by the doctor is immediately and without question changed to the "acceptable" medication, according to the bureaucratic scheme.
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John J. Coupal
Is that "druggist" like an
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Mary Lu
Grrrr... it's Pharmacist. Actually it's probably a Doctor of Pharmacy, AKA Pharm.D.
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Dex
We have something like this at my hospital, metropolitan medical center (names changed to protect the innocent). We've got the pneumatic tube thing for labs and drugs. We've got computerized order entry. We've got a brand new billion dollar clinic that I sit idle in and twiddle my thumbs because nobody can find it--the sign is still being made. New charts are half-and -half paper/electronic, and we can pull up most relevant information by computer (tests if they were done at the hospital, for example; operative reports; and old ER charts are completely electronic, I'm proud to say) although there are almost a dozen different computer systems with different passwords and operating commands--prolly not as good as the VA--computerizing a 700+ bed hospital is not an overnight affair.
Post a Comment »9:27 PM
apothecary?
3:46 PM
I think it's time to go torture Time this month.
And the idea of getting a Rx to the floor that fast only happens of the RN walks over to the pyxis and opens a drawer. Jeeze welcome to fairyland
9:47 PM
We don't have the bar code thing.
We don't have laptops for rounds (yet), although we do have alkward rolling workstation-trucks. It seems anything small and actually portable has the unfortunate side-effect of being easy to steal, lose, or be "appropriated" for another department, leading to the absurd rolling-cart-ization of every little piece of equipment.
Our pharmacists intern here and rotate among different services--they are quite helpful and are also in the computerized ordering system, enabling competent and efficient oversight.
One thing we can't, and prolly never will, match, is availability of every test ever done, simply because some stuff will be done at other hospitals or at private labtesting facilities (i.e. Labcorp, Quest, various stand-alone radiology boutiques).
Someday.
10:08 PM