Is there a business case for bar coding today?
EP: We have done a pretty good cost–benefit analysis looking at the role of barcode technology in the pharmacy dispensing process. The results have actually been very encouraging. Using an internally developed system such as ours, we were able to reach the break-even point within about 1 year of going live within the pharmacy. One of the reasons we were able to achieve these financial benefits is because the pharmacy is such a high-volume place and it dispenses so many medications, barcode technology is actually very good at reducing the last 0.25% of the errors. So that’s why the cost–benefit analysis came up so favorably. RW: Where do the savings come from, and do you account for the extra nurses’ time that it might take to do the scanning? EP: We don’t yet have the data to account for the patient safety impact of barcode scanning at the bedside. We have data at the pharmacy. But I will point out that we have pretty good data showing that at least with our implementation of barcode t
