What happens after a medication leaves the pharmacy and before it reaches the patient? In this episode of Key in to Quality, a pharmacy team explains how real-time location system technology is helping make that previously difficult-to-see journey visible. The conversation explores medication delays, workflow interruptions, EHR integration, multidisciplinary teamwork and the value of understanding a process clearly before trying to improve it.
Medication preparation and delivery involve numerous people, systems and handoffs — many of which are difficult to see. When a medication cannot be located at its scheduled administration time, nurses and pharmacy teams may spend valuable time searching, interrupting workflows and potentially delaying patient care.
In this episode of Key in to Quality, pharmacy and nursing colleagues share how they identified this visibility gap and adapted existing real-time location system (RTLS) infrastructure to help track selected medications between pharmacy preparation and administration. By integrating location information into familiar electronic health record workflows, teams can more quickly determine the last known location of a medication, reducing unnecessary searching and remakes.
The conversation explores how multidisciplinary collaboration, limited initial testing and an iterative approach helped move the work from an idea to a sustainable workflow. The guests also share lessons for other healthcare organizations, including starting with existing infrastructure, focusing on high-value use cases and involving the people who perform and support the work.
Ultimately, the project demonstrates a fundamental principle of quality improvement: Before teams can improve a complex process, they first need to make the invisible visible.