Midland regional e-prescribing system to prevent harm

The five Midland region DHBs are planning to implement a regional electronic prescribing and administration system to prevent medication errors harming patients.

A Registration of Interest for a regional ePA has been published on behalf of Bay of Plenty, Lakes, Hauora Tairāwhiti, Taranaki and Waikato DHBs.

The Midland Medicines Management project is being run by eSPACE, which sits with HealthShare, the shared services agency for the DHBs.

The supporting documents say the current system is manual and fragmented and means patient records are not available electronically across the region, “which leads to medication errors that harm patients”.

There is also poor medication adherence by patients and lack of medication expertise at the point of care, both resulting in patient harm and increased costs to the region.

The programme is looking for an electronic system to provide easy remote access to a patient’s current and previous medication lists and a reliable source of allergy and adverse effect information.

The system should have inbuilt decision support tools, “excellent reporting and monitoring capability” and allow for the seamless flow of medicine information during transitions of care, the business requirements document says.

The six general functions of the system are listed as; evaluating/planning; prescribing; obtaining; administering; monitoring and reporting; and transferring and medicines reconciliation

“An essential part of the medicines management system is the Medicines Reconciliation process,” it says.

This involves getting the most accurate list possible of patient medicines, allergies and adverse drug reactions and using this information within and across the continuum of care.

“By enabling the clinicians with an effective and easily accessible process, medication errors are more likely to be identified and corrected, which may result in a significant reduction of harm for the patient.”

The eSPACE programme is also delivering the Midland Clinical Portal, which is a single point of access for clinical information across the region.

The vision for the ePA solution is to: “standardise, digitise and make accessible medication data, medication decision support and deliver improved patient safety, improved quality of clinical and service delivery with better information available to support transitions of care and the medication treatment of our patients across the Midland region”.

The ROI closes on 19 March 2019.

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