Manual or electronic transfer of patient demographics?

[RR1]

Having just performed a 'Root Cause Analysis' on some of my laboratory incidents, this seems to identify the manual input of patient demographics into the lab computer as being a significant cause of our problems.

In my previous lab patient details were always electronically downloaded from the hospital patient administration system (PAS).

Please could you tell me how these details are transferred into you laboratory computer systems.

Many thanks!

[Malcolm Needs ☆]

We have to enter everything manually, because all of our patients are referred, however, it must be remembered that even the PAS has to be entered manually to start the ball rolling.

[clmergen]

We get both. Some patients demographics are entered into the Hospital system and that downloads to the lab system. But we are also a reference lab so that information is entered directly in the lab system. But Malcolm is correct in that all patient dempographic information is entered manually by someone.

[Likewine99]

All electronic for us.

[adiescast]

I'm with Malcolm on this one. Even though we mostly get our information into the LIS electronically from the hospital system, someone somewhere put it in manually. We still find many errors because of wrong entries (wrong patient selected from a list, patient entered again even though they are already in the system, misspellings, etc.).

[RR1]

I agree that there is potential for mistakes because every system relies on initial manual input , however, an electronic download from PAS to the LIMS cuts the risk of subsequent mistakes. If patient details are input manually twice in two different systems, the risk of error and confusion is doubled.

Clinical staff have difficulty anyway in correctly labeling request forms/ samples , and if patient details can be obtained via two different systems- this just increases risk of errors being made.

[Malcolm Needs ☆]

I agree that there is potential for mistakes because every system relies on initial manual input , however, an electronic download from PAS to the LIMS cuts the risk of subsequent mistakes. If patient details are input manually twice in two different systems, the risk of error and confusion is doubled.

Clinical staff have difficulty anyway in correctly labeling request forms/ samples , and if patient details can be obtained via two different systems- this just increases risk of errors being made.

I agree downloading from PAS to the LIMS cuts the risk of subsequent mistakes. I have no arguement with that.

On the other hand, of course, not correcting a mistake that is on PAS perpetuates the mistake.

If John Smith (DoB 01.01.59, blood group AB D Pos) is put on as Jon Smith, and then a real Jon Smith (DoB 01.01.59) comes in, and he is group O, D Neg, where are you then?

:confused:

[RR1]

[quote name=Malcolm Needs;17242

If John Smith (DoB 01.01.59' date=' blood group AB D Pos) is put on as Jon Smith, and then a real Jon Smith (DoB 01.01.59) comes in, and he is group O, D Neg, where are you then?

:confused:

Well hopefully the hospital number would have been matched with address at the time of identification. In any case this sort of mistake would be picked up after testing the sample (unless they were the same blood group).

The problems we have are about the manual lab entry errors where an incorrect digit on the dob or hospital number is not noticed by technical staff and blood is issued. These cases are all reportable as SABRE events to MHRA. An electronic download from PAS would definitely help reduce these.