Despite a world of best practices, standards, and your pursuit of safety, medication errors still exist. In fact, one out of every 133 patients in the operating room experiences a drug administration error. Many more go unreported.

We’re human. We make mistakes. The OR is a fast-paced environment. Vials and ampoules are often small and look alike. Once drawn up, clear liquids become impossible to tell apart, yet prepared syringes often go unlabeled. These oversights can create havoc in the operating room, causing harm to patients – errors that are totally preventable.

Codonics innovative, award-winning Safe Label System (SLS) is an FDA Class II medication safety system. It uses barcode technology to improve safety, compliance and efficiency during mediation preparation. SLS helps to greatly reduce the three most common medication errors in the OR, including vial and ampoule swaps, mislabeling, and syringe swaps.

SLS uses your pharmacy-approved formulary and barcode technology to identify vials and ampoules at the point of care. The system integrates with both manual and smart anesthesia drug carts* (ADC) in the OR, enabling it to be conveniently situated as part of the workflow. When a clinician removes a drug from the cart, he/she scans the manufacturer’s barcode on SLS, instantly matching the drug to the FDA-mandated drug database from your hospital’s formulary. SLS provides visual and audible confirmation of the drug in hand, acting as “a second set of eyes”, then presents a Joint Commission-compliant label that includes the drug name, concentration, dilution and diluent (if applicable), time of preparation, time of expiration, the preparer’s initials, any warnings about the drug, and a 2D barcode. This full-color, easy-to-read label is ready to apply to the syringe. The barcode printed on the syringe label can then be scanned prior to administration at SLS. SLS confirms the prepared medication by announcing the drug name and concentration as well as the time until the syringe expires, helping to prevent syringe swaps.

Enhance the anesthesia workflow with SLS-WAVE

As part of a total solution, SLS-WAVE, an accessory to Safe Label System, is a robust and highly accurate “hands-free” scanner that integrates with Epic Anesthesia and Plexus Anesthesia Touch to close the loop, bringing BCMA to the OR for the first time. Situated conveniently within the anesthesia workflow, SLS-WAVE can be affixed to the AIMS monitor or an IV pole, keeping the patient within reach. On the way to the port, the clinician simply “waves” the barcode of an SLS prepared syringe (or most prefilled syringes) past SLS-WAVE and the NDC data is electronically passed to the AIMS/EHR workspace, significantly improving workflow. Simultaneously, the drug name and color classification are visually displayed again, at administration, to ensure safety and prevent syringe swaps.

Codonics offers a total solution for the operating room to help ensure patient safety, improve TJC compliance, increase workflow efficiency, and improve documentation for increased charge capture and 340B initiatives by capturing the exact NDC every time a medication is administered. Let us help you introduce standardization in the operating room and help us bring an end to preventable medication errors today.

^{*SLS integration varies with our partners. Ask your sales representative for details.}