Barium Form

At 8:30 A.M. I walked into HIPPE and started checking expiration dates of medications.

At 9:30 A.M. My preceptor walked in and told me that he needed a form that complied with HIPPA, the Board of Pharmacy, and Florida state laws that would enable a more efficient distribution of a Barium fluid. 

Previously at HIPPE, if a patient were to have an MRI or CT scan, they would need to pick up a barium fluid from the hospital pharmacy a day before the test.  There is no outpatient pharmacy at HIPPE, so the patients typically had to wait an hour to receive the prescription.  My preceptor wanted to allow the Ct scan center in the hospital that gave the tests to also be able to distribute the medication.  If you’ve ever received a medication from a pharmacy, you should have noticed that a paper came along with it.  It is mandatory that all pharmacies distribute this paper with all medications.  The information on it should contain ADRs, drug name, use, and directions.  The CT Scan center of the pharmacy had already been handing out a form with directions on it.  It was now my job to create a form the combined the majority of the previous forms information plus all other required information on ONE PAGE.  

            The pharmacist gave me 6 pages of information and told me he needed it done by 11 A.M. (it was now already 10 A.M.).  I had to determine what information was important out of all the 6 pages.  Just an FYI, but I really don’t know that much about pharmacy law, so I was quite skeptical about leaving out certain information.  By 11 A.M. exactly, I had finished and I quickly rushed it over to the pharmacist where he had already started to have a meeting on it.  I had to cut out a lot of common/minor side effects, simplify the do not take this medication if… section to “Do not use if you have had an allergic reaction to barium and make sure your doctor is aware of the patients medical history prior to all medication use.”  The only real side effect information that was left in there were the ones that a doctor needed to be called about ASAP.  This final form now just consisted of a brief information guide on what to know and really not much more. Now the pharmacist is working on a generic label that can be pre-printed and slapped on by the CT scan staff so it can be distributed to them without walking anywhere near the pharmacy.

            You may be asking yourself, what does this have to do with health informatics? Well…besides the grand idea that this process is now going to make the process more efficient, it will be distributing information to the patient that they must receive/know.   This new form will make the process of the pharmacy less in charged of the barium fluid in just about everyway.  All the pharmacy will need to do is collect the signatures, prescriptions, and carbon copy labels (which will all come after the fact that the barium has left the hospital).  This process allows for optimum distribution of the barium with one great problem, the form doesn’t contain ALL the information.  If you ever got one of those papers from CVS/Walgreens with all the information, you probably never even opened it, BUT, you had the option to review all it.  With this form, only SOME of the information is provided.  I didn’t include when that medication shouldn’t be used because the patient SHOULD have told the physician before hand.  What if the patient didn’t want to disclose information? Before, the patient would have seen not to take it if…., but now, they won’t know unless they actually go to a website and review it.  I can’t tell you if this form is more beneficial or detrimental to the patient, but I can tell you one thing.  By only providing the important information, the patient will probably now actually take the time to look at those few sentences and really take it all in. 

What do you think?  Would you rather be provided ALL the information OR would you rather just get what YOU NEED TO KNOW?