Baptist Health Closes Loop on Safety, Security of OR Meds | Case Study

Baptist Health Floyd

Customer Profile

Baptist Health is a Louisville-based health system with 9 hospitals, 300 clinics, and 11 retail pharmacies in Kentucky and Indiana. As Kentucky's largest not-for-profit health system, it covers nearly 74% of the state's population.

Location

New Albany, Indiana

Challenge

Visibility and control of OR medications
Waste compliance issues
Time spent on manual processes

Solution

XT Anesthesia Workstation
Closed Loop for Anesthesia

Impact

Increased waste compliance by 28%
Increased audits from 10% to 100%
Decreased variance rate to 1.1%
Enhanced patient safety
Simplified OR workflow
Reduced pharmacy documentation time

The Challenge

At Baptist Health Floyd, pharmacy leaders, anesthesia providers, and staff transitioned from a manual OR environment to the Omnicell XT Anesthesia Workstation solution. The workstation securely stores medications and supplies needed for a full day of cases in one convenient place.

While the anesthesia and pharmacy teams quickly experienced the benefits of the automated systems and workflow processes — including enhanced safety, security, accessibility, and compliance — they sought further improvement. They desired a closed loop process between their Epic EHR and Anesthesia Workstations to automatically identify any variance between medications dispensed, wasted, and administered.

The Solution

Building on its existing integration with the Epic EHR, Omnicell developed new closed loop functionality for anesthesia that automates the process for reconciling controlled substances used, wasted, or transferred to another provider. This anesthesia closed loop interoperability enhances OR workflows, improves controlled substance accountability, automates waste documentation, and reduces time spent resolving discrepancies.

The Impact

Introducing anesthesia closed loop functionality at Baptist Health Floyd greatly improved workflows, patient safety, and time savings according to Director of Pharmacy Brandon McLain. "It's led to significant improvements in our controlled substance process and made providers' lives easier," he said.

With the closed loop functionality processing approximately 1,100 line items and 900 transactions per month, waste compliance increased from 65% to 92%, transaction auditing increased from 10% to 100%, and the variance rate was reduced to 1.1% through automatic reconciliation. No action is needed for zero waste, which accounts for 80% of dispenses. In pharmacy, the closed loop interoperability provides real-time medication reconciliation, with pharmacists reviewing 100% of cases.

"The goal with anesthesia closed loop interoperability was to partner with the anesthesia team to create a more harmonious workflow, one that is more efficient for them, but also safer when they're working on the patient," said Nilesh Desai, Chief Pharmacy Officer at Baptist Health. Baptist Health pharmacy leaders believe that forming a strong partnership with anesthesia providers early in the process is essential to the successful adoption of any anesthesia automation solution.

Visit Omnicell.com/AWS to learn more today.