I’ve been thinking about politics, comics, and bedside scanners. Hospital bar-coding initiatives involve numerous decisions. None are more controversial than what type of data-collection scanners nurses will take to points of care. As intensely...

I'VE BEEN THINKING about the plethora of viable candidates in the 2008 presidential race and the herd of caregiver ID technologies vying for the lead position in our hospitals. I’m writing on the heels of Super Tuesday, considered the homestretch ...

I've been thinking about preachers, camels, and commitments. In response to my November 2007 column, in which I appealed to America’s hospitals to lay off the snooze button, wake up, and get on with bedside bar coding, I received a thoughtful...

Counting Blessings and Learning Lessons I’ve been thinking about twins, overdosing, and snooze buttons. It was posted on the Internet, reported on CNN and written up in the LA Times. The story even popped up on the gossip tabloids at our local ...

I'VE BEEN THINKING about parents, Plymouths, pills, and packaging. My dad’s the Zen master of documentation. A few months ago when he turned in his car keys (at age 85), there in the glove box we found the little spiral notebook in which he had...

I’ve been thinking about the pros and cons of utilizing radio-frequency identification (RFID) technology in hospitals. In the middle of the Bible, a poet puts a rhetorical question to God: “Where can I flee from your presence?” A few lines...

I’ve been thinking... about beeps, rings, and dings. As a kid, I couldn’t wait for weekends. Monday through Friday the parents tried to get us to start the day on NBC with Ding Dong School. Miss Frances, the Mister Rogers of the 1950s, opened...

CLOSE IS NOT GOOD ENOUGH I've been thinking...about patient names, drug names, look-alikes, and sound-alikes. A few years ago, a charity mistakenly channeled my donations into the account of another donor named Mark Neuenschwander. One evening a ...

I've been thinking...about alcohol, chicken, drugs, and rising intelligence quotients—more specifically about beer labels, meat packaging, medication labels, and how bar codes are getting smarter. As seen on TV, Coors Lite bottles now come wrapped...

I've been thinking...that I'm wary and weary of hearing the "workaround" excuse. Not many, nevertheless too many in the healthcare community persist in pooh-poohing bar-code point-of-care (BPOC) systems as an effective safety measure by arguing,...