Milton Hospital Uses Technology to Enhance Patient Safety MILTON, Mass. - Milton Hospital, a clinical affiliate of Beth Israel Deaconess Medical Center providing community-based health care, is proud to announce the implementation of its Bedside Medication Verification (BMV) technology. By applying common barcode scanning to the field of medicine, BMV is used to identify patients and crosscheck medical records against medications prescribed during a patient's hospital stay. One of the first community hospitals in the area to adopt this technology, Milton Hospital is utilizing software from Meditech, headquartered in Westwood, MA, for the implementation. "At Milton Hospital, our top priority is to provide the safest patient care possible," stated Dr. Joseph Raduazzo, chief medical officer at Milton Hospital. "By providing tools to assist our physicians and nurses that streamline processes, we've created a more efficient system for administering medication. BMV will help us to avoid many common medication errors by ensuring that we adhere to the 'Five Rights' - that the right medication and right dosage is provided to the right patient via the right route and at the right time." Upon check-in to Milton Hospital, all patients are given an ID bracelet with a unique bar code. When medication is administered, BMV is used to confirm a patient's identity by scanning a bar code on patient's wristband. Then, caregivers verify the correct medication and dosage for that patient by scanning bar codes placed on the medication package by the hospital's pharmacy. The information is processed and crosschecked against patient charts, which are filed electronically at Milton Hospital. The process allows immediate access to a patient's current test results, and checks for any allergies, potential drug interactions and important lab test results. The Bedside Medication Verification program is one step in an effort to develop an entirely electronic medical record and ordering system at Milton Hospital. As the hospital has transitioned from paper to electronic patient data, it has implemented computer-based systems for its nurses and pharmacy. In 2008, Milton Hospital plans to launch similar electronic systems in the emergency department for medical records and order entry, and plans to implement Computerized Physician Order Entry throughout the facility later that year.

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