Bar Code Application examined in 2009 and 2010

Overall in every department type from 2009 to 2010 the use of bar code technology has increased. While the laboratory at a 3% increase is the department that experienced the largest volume of use. The pharmacy at a 7% increase and the medication administration at a 4% increase per department have seen the largest growth. This increase in department use also reconfirmed by the department’s plans to purchase and their intended use for the bar code technology. With the largest increase at 75%, the organization’s medication administration was the largest intended purchase plan for bar code implementation. The next largest department with a to plan to purchase the bar code system is the pharmacy …show more content…
IT spending in healthcare by comparison to other industries is much less. Healthcare organizations spend approximately 2.7% of their revenue of IT, and this IT spending covers the internal IT staff, the cost of purchasing products and services from the market. Banks, on the other hand, will spend 5.1% of their revenues on IT. This spending of revenue on IT is confusing until you think about how a health care organization operates. Health care organizations have a large, expensive staff base made up of physicians, RNs, LPNs, nurse aides, administrators, medical records staff, secretaries, receptionists, finance and billing department staff, laboratory staff, radiology and imaging staff, housekeeping, maintenance and security staff. Health care organizations have much other significant investment in their buildings, supplies, and equipment that all …show more content…
For example, the bar-coding medication administration (BCMA) technology uses a scanning device to compare the bar codes on the prescribed medication to the patient’s identification band. This scan electronically verifies the medication against the medical records. Another system that is being introduced is the automatic pharmacy dispensing machines that integrate the bar code scanning to the electronic medical record (EMR) and computerized physicians order entry (CPOE) allowing any handwriting errors to be eliminated. This bar code technology offers verification of medication dose, time, frequency, and correct patient has been estimated to take up to 30 minutes per patient for a nurse to manually confirm without applying this bar code that leaves less time for genuine patient