A newly implemented medication barcoding system at the Michigan-based Beaumont Health System helped the organization prevent some 23,500 possible drug errors within a six-month time period, officials announced Friday.

With an estimated 400,000 preventable drug-related injuries in hospitals resulting in $3.5 billion in unnecessary medical costs each year, Beaumont officials wanted to make medication error prevention a strategic imperative for improving patient safety, quality and cost across its three hospitals.

The IT-led project, under the direction of the health system’s executive vice president and CIO Subra Sripada, earned the organization the 2012 Transformational Leadership Award, sponsored by the College of Healthcare Information Management Executives and the American Hospital Association.

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Using a phased-in approach, leaders of Beaumont’s IT, nursing, pharmacy and quality departments worked together to roll out its medication barcoding implementation – from scanning incoming pharmaceutical products to training nursing staff. They began with Beaumont’s 250-bed community hospital in Grosse Pointe, followed by its 406-bed hospital in Troy and lastly at Beaumont’s 1,070-bed flagship hospital in Royal Oak.

Within a six-month time period, from December 2011 through July 2012, officials said the organization was also able to save nearly $535,000 in equipment purchases by working with laboratory scanner manufacturers to develop a configuration for medication barcoding using its existing scanner equipment.

Now each Beaumont patient has a unique bar code that only exists on their wristband, which helps to protect the integrity of the positive patient ID and medication barcode process. The system also alerts the nurse if the medication order is expired, discontinued, or if it’s the wrong medication or the wrong patient.

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“Sripada and his team led efforts that resulted in Beaumont being the first health system in Michigan, and one of the first in the nation, to achieve EHR meaningful use requirements in 2011,” said Gene Michalski, president and CEO of Beaumont Health System. “That accomplishment set the stage for our successful implementation of a barcoding medication system that is preventing potential medication errors each and every day at Beaumont’s three hospitals. Our patients are safer and our health system is spared the high costs of preventable drug-related injuries as a result.”

“This is a team win,” said Sripada. “Our IT staff worked closely with members of our nursing, quality and pharmacy teams in deploying this technology. This collaboration was key to making the project successful. We are committed to continue looking for ways to leverage technology in advancing our patient safety and quality goals and driving down our costs of delivery of care."