Scanning flushes

Do you scan flushes at your hospital? If not, why not?

From a St. Mary's perspective - we enter the flushes as a medication order. If the flush is required at a specific time, it is a scheduled med. If the flush is to be done as a standard of practice (saline flush before and after each antibiotic infusion) it is a PRN item to be accessed as often as necessary.
Even if the order is not present, by scanning the item there is documentation of what was used and when the flush occurred in case there is an issue down the line (such as a PICC line clotting). I guess we have always felt it was important to document that the flushes were done to rule out any issues with following protocol should the line fail.

I do understand, however, why many hospitals do not scan flushes. I have especially had some in-depth conversation about scanning flushes in our NICU as they frequently use both saline and heparin depending on the line. My argument with them is if the line requires only saline, don't you want to make sure you are not using heparin by mistake? And vice versa if the line requires heparin.

Wendy Wittwer BSN, MSM, CPEHR, CPHIT
Project Coordinator
St. Marys Hospital Medical Center
Madison, WI
608-229-7159