The TerraPharma Project to Honor Leading Organizations in Barcode-Enabled Patient Safety

SAN DIEGO–(BUSINESS WIRE)–The TerraPharma Project announces recipients of its 2011 Way-Paver Awards, recognizing individuals and organizations that have cleared the path and paved the way for a safer point of care in hospitals worldwide. Three awards will be presented April 28, 2011, at the 6th annual gathering of The unSUMMIT for Bedside Barcoding in Louisville, KY:

Collaboration Award

The first-ever Way-Paver Award to a hospital/supplier collaborative effort honors WellSpan Health, Cerner Corporation®, and Hospira Worldwide®. Together, they created an advanced infusion-management system that delivers unprecedented patient safety and caregiver efficiency. The first system to accomplish true bidirectional communication includes barcode scanning via a medication management system to auto-program infusion pumps from physician orders, sending infusion data back to electronic medical records, and to synchronize pump data as changes in medication delivery occur. In-room and remote views of infusion data synchronized with vital signs provide physicians and nurses with situational awareness of patient status, allowing more timely clinical responses to significant changes. Customized dashboards provide pharmacists with real-time views of patients’ infusion statuses to enable just-in-time preparation of next doses.

The groundbreaking results required years of collaboration between EMR supplier Cerner and infusion-device supplier Hospira to overcome technical limitations and satisfy workflow needs of WellSpan nurses, pharmacists and physicians.

Institutional Award

Southwestern Vermont Medical Center (SVMC) is one of only 30 hospitals worldwide to achieve Magnet status for nursing excellence three consecutive times. In support of its nurses, the hospital secured grant funding from AHRQ to demonstrate the efficacy of barcoding systems for reducing medication administration errors.

Pioneers in using 2-D barcodes for patient wristbands and many medications, SVMC effectively leveraged rapid-cycle improvements over 36 months to identify obstacles to consistent scanning and to eliminate workarounds when delivering medications.

SVMC has administered over one million doses of medication using BPOC and has maintained a 97.9% medication scan rate and a 99.4% patient-identification scan rate over the past 12 months.

Individual Awards

George Laurer and Bill Selmeier provided the foundation on which BPOC is built. In 1972, IBM engineer Laurer invented the Universal Product Code, ubiquitous in stores today. Laurer’s colleague, Bill Selmeier, provided the marketing strategy and execution that persuaded grocery manufacturers to print barcodes on packages at the source.

About the TerraPharma Project

Inspired by the potential for tangible improvements in healthcare but frustrated by the sluggish adoption of proven solutions, Mark Neuenschwander and Jamie Kelly formed the TerraPharma Project, LLC to help make a difference. As experts, writers, and speakers on the subject of barcode point-of-care safety technologies, they feel there’s too much time spent surveying patient-safety problems from 30,000-feet and too little spent sharing down-to-earth, results-based information. Turns out they are not alone. More than 1,200 attendees have waded through the weeds with Kelly and Neuenschwander over the past five years, returning to their place of care equipped and inspired to get to the point of safer patient care.
Contacts

The TerraPharma Project
Mark Neuenschwander, Co-Founder
425-644-6796
Mark@unsummit.com