Success Story: Integrated Bedside Labeling Application

The St. John Companies, (www.patientidexpert.com), a leading supplier of patient identification products, deployed a patient identification solution at Davis Hospital and Medical Center in Layton, UT, that included a POC (point of care) bedside labeling application.

Niceware Technology

The bedside labeling application used the following NiceLabel Suite modules:

• NiceLabel Pro
• NiceWatch
• Pocket NiceLabel

Challenge

The healthcare provider was looking for a solution that positively ties patient identification information to laboratory specimens. The marking and labeling of the specimens had to eliminate any possibility of identification errors.

Solution

The St. John Companies suggested a robust and easy-to-use application that enables 2D bar code printing on patient wristbands using data from the hospital’s Healthcare Information System (HIS) and specimen ID label printing at the bedside using mobile bar code reading and label printing devices. The St. John Companies deployed its ID-Link™ solution, using modules from the NiceLabel Suite software edition.

At admission, healthcare staff prints a patient wristband with human readable information and a 2D bar code that has embedded three or more of the patient’s unique identifiers. The NiceWatch module of the NiceLabel Suite software filters the patient admission data from the hospital’s database and encodes the selected information in the 2D bar code on the wristband.

When a caregiver draws a blood sample from a patient, s/he takes the phlebotomy tools, a PDA with built-in scanner and a mobile label printer to the patient’s bedside. At the bedside, the caregiver scans his/her badge and the 2D bar code on the patient’s wristband. Then s/he chooses the number of specimen labels s/he wants to print by selecting the quantity on the PDA screen. The printed label includes human readable and bar coded patient identifiers, caregiver ID number and the time/ date the label was printed.

When the caregiver has collected the specimen and labeled the specimen container at the bedside, the specimens are sent to the lab for analysis. The specimens are properly labeled with all the information required by the laboratory to reduce wrong-blood-in-tube incidents and accidents caused by incorrect identification of the patient.

Benefits

This integrated patient identification and bedside blood collection solution increases patient safety in many ways: caregivers need less time to identify specimens properly; reduced transcription errors by caregivers and absolute confirmation of caregiver identification through 2D bar code data input; little opportunity to mix up tubes and containers with misplaced labels, which results in misidentified specimens.

Implementing the ID-Link Positive Patient ID & Laboratory System from St. John enabled Davis Hospital and Medical Center to become one of the early adopters that complied with new Joint Commission requirements for specimen identification. After the initial implementation, St. John implemented several additional positive patient identification solutions within a few months, creating additional revenue streams for its primary consumables business.

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