OctariusRx President and Consultant Pharmacist Victor Alves is a featured speaker at the virtual "It's a New World Conference 2020" and will be presenting: Hot Topics in Pharmacy. He will discuss current pharmacy issues including updates to medication management, USP Chapters <797> (sterile compounding), <800> (hazardous drugs) and the impact of COVID-19. He will provide practical tips for improving patient safety and survey success.
This year, the Centers for Disease Control and Prevention’s (CDC) One & Only Campaign turns ten years old. The One & Only Campaign, as you may know, focuses on eliminating unsafe injection practices. In the span of a single decade, healthcare facilities across the country have come a long way in improving patient safety via safe injection practices — but: there is still much work to be done.
Vaccines have greatly reduced the burden of infectious diseases and they play a critical role in managing public health today. The benefits of vaccination extend far beyond prevention of specific diseases in individuals to the protection of entire societies. For vaccines to achieve their best results, however, they must be handled, stored and administered correctly. Do you know the best way to store vaccines? Is your healthcare facility following best practices for vaccine storage?
Antibiotic stewardship is a global issue and it’s something we all must address. At the facility level, it’s not only a regulatory concern, it’s a patient safety issue. With the ongoing global spread of the Novel Coronavirus (COVID- 19), the issue of antibiotic stewardship (already a significant focus by the certification and accreditation bodies), has been pushed even further out into the spotlight. Beyond just being a survey challenge, antibiotic stewardship can have a profound impact on patient outcomes — not only today’s patients, but also future patients.
This week, we’re celebrating National Patient Safety Awareness Week (March 8-14, 2020). According to the Institute for Health Improvement (IHI), National Patient Safety Week is an annual recognition event meant to encourage everyone to learn more about health care safety.
According to the ECRI Institute*, diagnostic testing and medication events are the two greatest risks to patient safety in ambulatory care centers today. As the landscape continues to change and healthcare delivery shifts from hospitals to ambulatory facilities, we will have to develop, and enhance, systems that minimize risks and keep our patients safe. Using the services of a consultant pharmacist can help you enhance patient safety in your ambulatory healthcare facility. The following are five ways in which a consultant pharmacist can help:
Is your facility ready for survey? As a consultant pharmacist, I work with ambulatory healthcare facilities to continuously guide and support best practices to ensure patients are safer and surveys are easier, and in this blog, I share insights from my years of experience in this field.
Is your ambulatory care facility ready for survey? Ok, ok: that’s probably a rhetorical question as you never feel truly ready, right? Though surveys are routine events for facilities, they can still be unnerving. No matter how prepared you may be, it’s only human to become a bit anxious when faced with an unannounced ‘pop quiz’.
If you manage an ambulatory surgery center (ASC) or other ambulatory healthcare facility, benchmarking is probably a concern for your organization. Benchmarking is not just a requirement of accrediting agencies such as the Accreditation Association for Ambulatory Health Care (AAAHC) and The Joint Commission (TJC): it’s a critical component of quality assessment and improvement.
Drug shortages are still coming up quite frequently in facilities. Is your policy and procedure describing what to do when you have a drug shortage up to date? Do you follow the steps noted in your policy? Is your consultant pharmacist helping by providing you with updated regulatory guidance?
