Smart Infusion Pump Safety

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Challenge

Smart infusion pumps provide a rich data source that can be leveraged to prevent medication errors. However, complex vendor tools and limited resources make accessing and analyzing this data both time-consuming and challenging. As a result, the data these devices produce is one of the most underutilized assets in the hospital.

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Solution

Bainbridge Health’s Med O.S.® platform automates the labor-intensive process of analyzing smart infusion pump data and unlocks valuable insights not available through most device vendor tools. Combined with network benchmarking data, our clinical and data teams deliver turn-key insights to help transform data into actionable clinical interventions.

Internal Pump Management

Many health systems have done the hard work of implementing Dose Errors Reduction Software. However, it becomes challenging to continuously monitor and push changes as drug libraries grow and practice evolves. This is compounded by limited evidence-based resources to support best practice for decision support.

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Bainbridge Health

Using the Med.O.S.® technology, our team of clinical subject matter experts and data scientists are focused exclusively on helping you both manage and optimize clinical decision support to improve medication safety. Partnering with Bainbridge Health brings together lessons from over 150 sites of care to help inform and share best-practice when making decisions about smart infusion pump management.

Infusion Pump Safety Resources

Insights & Interventions

The following use cases highlight how Bainbridge Health has driven value for adult and pediatric hospitals across our network.

Alert Management

While DERS compliance is an important safety metric, it is just the first step. Continuous monitoring to identify and correct clinically-irrelevant decision support alerting is essential for nursing workflow, as well as improving DERS compliance, limiting overrides and—ultimately—preventing medication errors.

Reducing Overrides

Inappropriate overrides of clinical decision support are associated with a 6x greater likelihood of patient harm. However, overrides remain the most common response to clinical decision support alerts. In fact, over 70% of clinical decision support alerts are overridden. Obtaining a granular understanding of overrides to determine their appropriateness is a key component of quality improvement to reduce smart infusion pump errors.

Hard Stops & Basic Infusions

Implementing Hard Stops into clinical decision support can be an effective strategy for reducing the most serious smart infusion pump medication errors. However, Hard Stops must (1) be based on real world practice data to prevent them from being to constricting and (2) pharmacy and safety leaders must analyze resultant actions to ensure basic mode is not being used to circumvent Hard Stops.

Drug Library Compliance​

Dose Error Reduction Software (DERS) has the potential to identify and alert clinicians to medication errors before they reach patients. However, if drug library parameters do not correspond to practice, compliance can be low. With ISMP now setting the standard for DERS compliance at 95%, it is important to understand and correct the drivers of non-compliance.

Smart Infusion Pump - Electronic Health Record Interoperability

Smart Infusion Pump and EHR interoperability can provide safety advantages that mitigate the risk of medication errors, as well as workflow advantages for bedside clinicians. However optimizing the smart infusion pump library and synchronizing it with EHR order sets is a labor intensive process that can pose numerous challenges upon “go-live.” Continuous data monitoring and improvement interventions are essential pre, peri, and post go-live for successful interop implementations.
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Try It Now

From our roots in a hospital system, we understand it can be challenging to bring on a new partner. Contact us today by filling out the form or scheduling a meeting below to learn more about how we work with organizations to prove the value of Med O.S.® with no long-term commitment.