Patient and Medication Safety

Ever since 2000 when the Institute of Medicine released its watershed report claiming that more than 2 million serious medical errors occur annually, the health care industry has been trying to improve patient safety. McKesson’s comprehensive patient safety framework provides the blueprint to help move the health care quality needle in the right direction.

In addition, by offering solutions that stretch far beyond the general “First, do no harm” notion espoused in the Hippocratic Oath, McKesson is enabling health care organizations to make good on the following patient safety definition:

Patient safety is the sustained, proactive process of identifying, avoiding and rapidly resolving errors, omissions, mishaps and miscommunications that could affect a patient’s healing, health or well-being at any point, at any time, in any care setting.

To realize this vision, health care organizations should embrace a patient safety framework that supports:

Information Safety, which refers to the availability of secure, up-to-date, complete and accurate medical records for every patient. To ensure safety and health care quality, McKesson offers a “single source of truth” through solutions that provide essential integration of patient data across settings and episodes of care. In addition, our network and access solutions ensure speed, reliability, accessibility and manageability of your network.

Communications Safety, which refers to the sharing of relevant, real-time information to all authorized, interested parties with particular focus on the need to improve hand-off communications. McKesson offers such anywhere, anytime access via secure clinician portals, online patient visits, enterprise patient care visibility and Web-based ambulatory care solutions.

Medication Safety, which refers to a dockside-to-bedside medication administration strategy, designed to ensure the “five-rights”—right patient, right medication, right dose, right route and right time. McKesson is unmatched in its care planning and nursing documentation solutions to ensure medication safety at each stage where medication errors can occur—prescribing, transcribing, administering, dispensing, and monitoring.

Diagnostic Safety, which refers to the gathering and interpretation of data that supports optimal care planning and treatment. McKesson’s integrated radiology information and picture archiving and communication system (RIS/PACS) and computerized physician order entry (CPOE) solutions foster collaboration across departments and speeds the delivery of information.

Treatment Safety, which refers to the accurate capture, recording, executing and sharing of data to support patient safety. For example, assessment-driven documentation with alerts and reminders helps reduce care variability by reinforcing desired behavior. McKesson’s integrated laboratory information system, operating room and medication administration solutions ensure that the right patient receives the right treatment.

Environmental Safety, which refers to a very broad view of the patient’s environment—from staff management and equipment tracking using health care RFID to protocol-based care plans and order sets. McKesson’s strategic relationship with The Clorox Company focuses on helping customers enhance patient safety through the development and promotion of disinfection protocols for mobile equipment and handheld electronic devices.