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Volume 42 • Number 5 • May 2015
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JC Sentinel Event:
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IT Can Save Lives Or Do Harm—It’s All in the Planning
Dean Jordan: Why we need another new pharmacy school. Stakeholders scuffle over safety of generic drug labeling.
CLINICAL
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The skinny on pharmacist’s value in bariatrics. ISMP: Multiple IV line mix-ups can be deadly.
OPERATIONS & MGMT
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Some hospitals score big on HCAHPS survey. Q&A: Kyle Skiermont makes the case for specialty pharmacy. Sanborn and Evans describe their path to the C-suite.
TECHNOLOGY
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Profiles in Pharmacy: St. David’s embraces technology.
Kcentra for Urgent Warfarin Reversal: Practical Considerations for Implementation See insert after page 48.
ASHP May Urge Profession To Reject Business of Killing
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lthough information technology (IT) systems can increase patient safety, poorly designed or implemented health IT can do the exact opposite, contributing to patient harm, according to a Sentinel Event Alert recently sent out by the Joint Commission. Medication mismanagement was listed as a frequent perpetrator of adverse events, according to the Joint Commission, which gave several examples: • A nurse entered a 3-year-old child’s weight into the electronic health record (EHR) as 32 kg, instead of 32 lb and the child was given a potentially lethal dose of medication. • A physician chose an inappropriate delivery route from a dropdown menu and a medication was ordered as an intramuscular injection, instead of IV.
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ealth-system pharmacists may soon face an ethical dilemma on the issue of capital punishment: Should they oppose the profession taking an active role in the preparation of drugs for lethal injections or leave the decision up to the individual? In April, the American Society of Health-System Pharmacists took the first step to what could become a new, more restrictive policy on the issue, potentially bringing the ASHP into line with other health care organizations that oppose members’ participation in carrying out the death penalty.
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see SENTINEL EVENT, T page 42
A.S.P.E.N conference:
Pediatric Feeding Gap in ICU Hurts Hospitals, Patients Long Beach, Calif.—Malnutrition among critically ill children is a common and significant contributor to poor clinical outcomes and greater hospital costs, according to abstracts presented at the American Society for Parenteral and Enteral Nutrition (A.S.P.E.N.) annual conference. To reverse that concerning trend, researchers presented novel tools to
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see FEEDING GAP, P page 25
see KILLING DRUGS, page 18
State Laws Seek To Hamstring Pharmacists in Biosimilar Arena
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harmacy trade associations and the FDA are not happy about state laws that they say will unnecessarily hamstring pharmacists’ ability to switch patients to biosimilar products poised for market entry. The restrictive legislation “will undermine trust in [biosimilars], are worrisome and represent a disservice to patients who could benefit from these lower cost treatments,” FDA spokesman Kristofer Baumgartner told Pharmacy Practice News. “[Given] the high standards for approval of biosimilar and interchangeable products,” he
FDA Approval Corlanor, the first new CHF drug approved in nearly a decade. See page 43
added, “patients and health care professionals can be assured that, when these products go to market, they will meet the [requirements for] safety, efficacy and high quality that everyone expects and counts on.” The first test case in this controversy is Sandoz’s filgrastim biosimilar Zarxio, the first biosimilar to be approved in the United States. As increasing numbers of states pass laws that restrict substitution, pharmacists will be unable to automatically switch Zarxio for Amgen’s Neupogen because the
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POLICY
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see BIOSIMILARS, page 8
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