Cardinal CEO discusses technologies to prevent errors

Patient Safety Through Technology
The New York Times, February 17, 2007
SATURDAY INTERVIEW
By WILLIAM J. HOLSTEIN

At least 1.5 million preventable drug-related injuries occurred in 2006 in American hospitals, long-term care institutions and outpatient clinics, according to the Institute of Medicine. And, the institute said, 98,000 deaths occurred both because of mistakes in administering drugs and because of infections contracted in hospitals.

Kerry Clark, 54, chief executive of Cardinal Health, a maker of health care products with $81 billion in annual sales, said hospitals should correct these problems with the help of new technologies. Mr. Clark, who arrived at Cardinal in April 2006 after 32 years at Procter & Gamble, discussed both drug mistakes and infections in a recent conversation. Following are excerpts:

Q. What can be done to make sure that the right medication gets to the right patient?
A. Problems can happen when a patient moves around from one setting to another within a hospital. They can happen when nurses go from one shift to another. And it even happens when a patient transfers from hospital to home.
There are things that can be done using the type of technology that Cardinal provides. Specifically, it’s continually verifying that when the medication is drawn at the nursing station on the patient’s floor that it is checked against the patient record. The time and dose are confirmed. Then it can be verified at the patient’s bedside. Technologically speaking, the verification at the nursing station comes through a product called Pyxis, which is a fairly sophisticated medication dispensing piece of hardware and is present in more than 60 percent of hospitals.

Q. What is the key technology of this medication-dispensing system?
A. It’s software-based. I like to think of it as a computerized dispensing machine. The nurse enters in her code and scans in the patient data. Very specific pillboxes then open to allow only the right medication to be withdrawn.

Q. So the system physically controls what medications are available?
A. Correct. It’s all connected to the patient’s record and the billing record for the hospital. The next most challenging step is the last 100 feet, from there to the patient’s bedside. Recently, Cardinal acquired a company called Care Fusion which offers a software and scanning device that allows bar-coded medication to be scanned at bedside.

Q. Are these patient safety efforts paying off?
A. The answer is, we think so. This week, we’ll be presenting at the Healthcare Information and Management Systems Society the first and only clinical data that is connected among products involved in the last 100 feet. Basically, we’re going to demonstrate that the clinical data can flow from the hospital pharmacy to the med station on the floor, also to the infusion pumps that deliver injectable medicine and also to the hand-held Care Fusion device.

Q. Are you the only company doing these things or is the entire industry doing likewise?
A. We’re the only company that has a complete end-to-end solution.

Q. But certainly your competitors are trying to do some of these things?
A. People have various parts of the solution. But we have the very first comprehensive solution.

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Link: http://www.nytimes.com/2007/02/17/business/17interview.html